\n

If I might make a suggestion, you might want to use the expression "best practice" or something like that instead of "hygiene." Hygiene sounds clinical; when used to describe anything other than physical cleanliness, it has kind of a Mengele connotation to my ear. I hope this suggestion is welcome, for whatever it's worth, because I'm interested in your project.

\nIn contrast, I like "hygienic", at least when it's used to refer to things that can corrupt your game (e.g. letting a setpiece climax encounter slip into your session prep). That's a powerful metaphor when you're trying to stay true to a specific vision.

\n To go back a little bit to the first question here\u2014about how you can design an encounter without planning, here is how I go about it. I prep differently, since I don't use modules, and generally I follow one of these two techniques.

1. In the Dungeon. Just set it and forget it. For this space, you can follow two paths: to design things piecemeal and accept that you won't know how they fit together until it happens is the easiest. The big advantage of a megadungeon here is that you can trust that someone is eventually going to trigger your trap\u2014so you don't have to plan for it to happen to any particular people any particular way. It can sit for a year before someone stumbles into the room. And you will be so pleasantly surprised to remember all the stuff you put in there when it happens.

Of course for your dungeon you are going to want to have some more complicated interlocking parts. Things that are designed to go together. My hygenic practice here is that, if I am imagining possible outcomes, to imagine at least two very different ones and to make sure that the pieces are there to make them both really awesome. Then throw in a few of the type a components around them and you will be almost guaranteed to get something that you didn't plan for.

2. Outside the dungeon my campaign is really driven by player initiative. They keep coming up with things they want to do that push the borders of the sandbox. This is good. But it means that they themselves are in charge of framing the encounters. I dangle some ideas in front of them and they chose how to pursue. If you want the sunset behind your battle, the only way you can make that happen is to appeal to their aesthetics or to make it somehow matter\u2014which is easy enough to be honest. I'm pretty sure they won't be approaching the terrible forest castle in their region anytime except right before dawn because someone told them that that's when the witch is vulnerable. Give them the tools to set up the situation and trust their judgements instead of using your own.

Once you've done that setup, you can go back to type 1. In the castle I have imagined a negotiation that could happen, I have imagined a single combat with the party's high level fighter, I have imagined an all-out battle on the field. I also know that there is a list of other weird stuff, like that alleged dawn vulnerability, special qualities of the inhabitants, and most of all the players' own ingenuity and resources (like, I certainly didn't remember that one of them has armour that lets them levitate whenever they want but sure enough...). So I can trust that some exciting, unexpected things will happen even in a situation that has been foreshadowed for weeks.

\n Eero! Those notes. Wow! I was expecting some scrawled notes hastily transcribed and scanned but this, whew, this is something else.

I see the point about hygiene, I was just trying to push a hypothetical case to see where the bounds of hygiene lay and how, perhaps, cool elements from unhygienic play could conceivably emerge through play. I like this method of DMing a great deal, especially with its emphasis on improvisation, interpretation and reincorporation. I also, for the record, like "hygienic."

Having looked through your notes a little, Eero, is it generally the case that you'll write up similar for all the general areas the players might explore? I feel like this Wargame Referee stance is contingent on having a number of premeditated challenge/encounter generators to reinforce its impartiality. I think similar can be seen in AW/DW with the fronts etc.

[edit: It'd be sweet to compile a bunch of system-agnostic community generated OSR encounters/events]

\n

I think I also recall Eero talking about non-treasure XPs/non-monster killing XPs. If this is enacted, it's a kind of drift. At what point would some kind of hygiene-maintaining procedure need to be put in place?

\nI don't think that's a drift, or at least not a serious one, because XP for treasure isn't defined up at the level of the creative agenda (or even "technical strategy", but I'm not going to try and be completely au fait with Eero's framework from the previous page) - the agenda is challengeful play through fictional exploration. If initially the set up is the challenge of getting treasure from lair beasts, and later the challenge evolves to a point where the XP can meaningfully be awarded for some other kind of challenge, you're still well within the bounds of the agenda.

That doesn't mean you don't discuss it, but it's not necessarily a big deal. It's the same issue as providing the kind of content that the players will find fun. In the same way that you might introduce an urban adventure into an OSR game that has previously been about dungeons, with or without discussion with the group, based on the players, I think you could introduce new sources of XP. (Of course, XP by its nature is a *goal*, so if you introduce new sources of XP you need to let them know at the point of deciding whether to go for the challenge, not just when it's awarded).

The hygienic concern here is that the new XP source be something the GM will not be tempted to bias. For example, quest XP might be a good thing - it's within the rules - but it might be unhygienic, if the GM can't set it impartially, and with a fictional basis, the way he or she can with the treasure XP. But so long as the new XP source is something like that - e.g. XP per hex explored, per portal closed - then it's not a big concern.

(I'm trying to practice thinking about these questions, and articulating answers. I may be entirely wrong, and am happy to be corrected by Eero and others).

\n

Having looked through your notes a little, Eero, is it generally the case that you'll write up similar for all the general areas the players might explore? I feel like this Wargame Referee stance is contingent on having a number of premeditated challenge/encounter generators to reinforce its impartiality. I think similar can be seen in AW/DW with the fronts etc.

\nWell, this particular material was somewhat special for certain reasons of creative context: I'm not the regular GM of the campaign at this point, and that adventure was partly a rejoinder in our on-going discussion about how the LotFP mechanical framework could be used to carry constructions akin to feats and prestige classes; our current referee, as much as we love him, can be a bit of a conservative stick in the mud about any mechanical innovations at times, so parts of the emphasis in that adventure were all about showing some examples of how feats and prestige classes might look like in LotFP.

Another contextual point is that it's an investigation adventure set in a wilderness environment, which makes it a bit of a hybrid in comparison to the classical formats.

Those hedges being in place, I can answer the question: when I'm running the sandbox regularly as the main referee, I write up hexcrawl procedure and procedural content generation processes to help me develop and adapt material for the game as it proceeds. Random encounter tables and such, completely ordinary OSR technique. Then on occasion I will also use specifically created overland scenarios as part of this process; commercial examples are a bit few, but Better Than Any Man is a good example of what I mean here. I can of course create my own, as this quick sketch of a Romanian \u017eupan, devoid of much in the way of geographic spec, shows.

In general I'd say that you don't want to do overland, sandbox-y adventuring completely without prep, but depending on the skills and local play culture you might need more or less, or different types of prep. I'm pretty good at this point with a surprisingly little in the way of random encounter tables, for example, due to my having practiced alternative random generation methodologies that don't require tables at hand \n

If I understand correctly, part of maintaining hygienic play is an awareness in the whole group of what the core concept and activity of play is exactly.

Another big part is watching out for Drift, and putting a stop to drift that is too far away from the central concepts/activities of play.

\nThat's an interesting point, about the relationship of drift in the Forgite sense to this concept of "hygiene". My first reaction would be to consider them as somewhat different orders of thing, but thinking about it carefully, it does seem like avoiding drift is sort of one of the motivations behind maintaining rigorous hygiene. We maintain hygiene - or, equivalently, wield available authorities conservatively, in proven reliable ways - in an effort to prevent the game from developing wrong habits that encourage wrongful action. If the group consensus wants to drift the game, then hygiene will ultimately avail to nothing, but I'm sure that a generally hygienic practice will make minor drift more difficult.\n

For example, I noticed Eero talked about the retirement of characters. The retirements occurred when their fictional motivations no longer aligned with the core concepts/activities of play. So this is a procedure put in place to maintain the hygiene of the game, correct?

\nRetirement is partially hygienic as a concept, yes: the hygienic part is that by requiring characters to have solid reasons for adventuring we prevent the game from slipping into a situation where the referee is responsible for inventing false motivation, and we ensure that the characters remain balanced against the setting; characters who are strong enough to not need to be desperate adventurers anymore quite being such, instead of continuing as weird one-man armies. In this way the concept of character retirement serves to regulate the xp economy and direction of adventuring, in relationship to whatever directions the players desire for their game.

(The reason for why I call retirement a hygienic concept only in part is that it is also a satisfying fictional conceit, and part of the game's genuine reward system; there's nothing quite like realizing that your character has achieved what he set out to do, and may now have his epilogue - stop adventuring, invest your wealth in something sensible, play dollhouse to whatever degree you find amusing, and perhaps start up a new character if you feel like it. When D&D lost this notion in favour of endless adventuring, or adventuring until the level cap, I think it lost not only an important regulatory element, but also an important reward system.)\n

When and how do you look at certain kinds of drift and decide it is reaching the bounds of the core concepts of play? Do you decide as a group, does the GM decide but then gain the approval of the other players to support the decision? Something else entirely?

\nWhat I personally do with drift is that when I realize that it's happening or happened, I attempt to determine what the group's interests are about it. Sometimes drift happens because we wanted it to, in which case we well might simply acknowledge it afterwards. For example, our current D&D has sort of arrived where it is in certain aspects of its creative concord by drifting: we did not know when we started the current campaign how e.g. creative authority would be divided between players, and where the balance between realism and victory would be set in terms of motivation. Only afterwards we could smile at each other in satisfaction and declare ourselves just about the best D&D crew ever.

Sometimes drift happens due to ignorance and old habits, and it's actually not desired. I'd say that my method in combating this mainly consists of giving inspirational speeches For example, we occasionally have players who like to argue from the rulebook (as authority instead of precedent, I mean), which doesn't work too well in this game; one might look at this as a sort of agenda drift. I try to be conscious of such matters and notice them, so I can bring the discussion to the meta level instead of having to listen to boring low-quality rules-lawyering

In general, though, I don't think that creative discord can be handled in any except one way in roleplaying games: you have to come to a creative agreement with the group to continue playing together. Sometimes that agreement can be live and let live, for minor enough differences, while other times you have to talk it out and either reach a compromise, or stop playing together.\n

I think I also recall Eero talking about non-treasure XPs/non-monster killing XPs. If this is enacted, it's a kind of drift. At what point would some kind of hygiene-maintaining procedure need to be put in place?

\nMartin answered this exactly the way I would: the hygienic issue about alternative xp systems is not in the fact that they are alternative, but rather in maintaining sharp goal-orientation and calculability of the experience points. I often say that the xp reward mechanism is in two parts, and you can't actually understand what it's doing without realizing that: the first part is the trigger ("We got treasure, thus we succeeded"), and the second part is the quantification, which answers how much xp should be collected. My personal understanding of D&D is happy as long as the trigger is clearly goal-oriented, and the quantification is doable, somehow objective so that it's not just arbitrary.

For example, general quest experience rules are actually relatively tricky to write because of the quantification part. It's not that difficult to determine whether a quest has in fact been accomplished (we've long held that if nothing else helps in this regard, then at least we can write down the quests as they are undertaken, and use this written scrip as proof of the fact that a given deed was, in fact, an intentional quest and not just some random occurrence), but quantification of how much xp should be received for it, that's actually not so obvious. I have some thoughts, but I've never had the time/inspiration for really hammering it out to my satisfaction yet.

\n I'd love to talk about quest XPs, but unfortunately, I have to run to work right now.

One thing I'd been considering for similar things was looking at the XP + treasure charts in the books, then using that to determine XPs, even if the actual treasure isn't given out.

Essentially, if the players rescue the 3HD/12 HP Princess as a quest, the XPs are for what defeating a 3HD/12HP monster are, + XP equivalent of the treasure a Princess "monster" would have, going by the random charts. Similarly, holding off an Orc raiding party intent on sacking a hamlet full of 1HD peasants would earn both the XP value of the peasants and the equivalent amount of treasure those peasants would have if they were monsters for each that survived due to PC actions.

Not sure it would work at all, but that's where I was starting from.

\n At least one edition of Rolemaster had an "XP for Miles Traveled" reward that might adapt well to an exploration/hex crawl type game.

\n

Seems like I still have this Solomonari stuff in Dropbox from when we played it, here. I should note that when I say that it's personal notes, I mean it - there's some of campaign-specific, genre-specific, school-specific shorthand in there, so chances are that if something doesn't make sense it's because of that. Also, despite being sort of laid out, that's just one evening's prep work, basically stream of thought ...

\nOne evening - how many hours is that, roughly?

And, in the event, how much play time drew directly on this prep? (I appreciate that this is a much messier question than it would be for plotted-scenario prep, or even the prep that I do for my small-location-centric games)

\n

I don't know, maybe 4-5 hours?

\nSo 12-15 hours prep in normal-people time, right? I don't know if you've noticed but your words-per-minute is pretty high.

Would you say that there's a certain need for prep, or at least to behave is if an objective scenario exists for which you are "referee" rather the later incarnation of the Dungeon Master as provider of entertainments through improvisation?

Sorry for the brevity of my comment, I'm rushing to work. I'll be back later to expand.

\n I think you could definitely run Traveller hygienically. The original edition of the game does have things like random encounters and such. And the whole death during chargen...

Actually, this conversation is starting to convince me that the way to make an enjoyable game out of Traveller is indeed to run it hygienically. I've long been thinking how would I make a Traveller game interesting in this age of mechanics for player contribution to setting and rewarding player interests and goals. I'm not sure you need that, you just need a group of players ready to engage the game as presented and make the sorts of extensions Eero has shared for D&D if absolutely necessary, but otherwise, engage the game as is, and find motivation for adventure.

I don't know all the procedures Paul Gazis used, but I always admired his Eight Worlds campaign. He revamped some of the game mechanics to suit his tastes, but I think he ran a pretty hygienic game and sure attracted quite a crowd of players. And some play groups didn't last long (I remember a story told by Glenn Blacow of a group of players who decided to run a pirate ship which lasted a few sessions at most before they died in a blaze of glory - it sounded like everyone had fun).

Frank

\n I'm not familiar with Traveller myself, although I've heard good things and intend to read up on it at some point. From what I've heard I understand that it has been played for similar kicks as I do with D&D, so presumably one could have a neutral referee, challenge-oriented campaign, goal-oriented player activity and so on in it as well. Certainly there's nothing in the subject matter to prevent it. Besides, many count recent interest in Traveller as a part of the OSR scene - as has been discussed elsewhere, the concept of "OSR" is pretty vague when all's said and done.\n

Would you say that there's a certain need for prep, or at least to behave is if an objective scenario exists for which you are "referee" rather the later incarnation of the Dungeon Master as provider of entertainments through improvisation?

\nWell, yes - it is a central conceit of the way D&D is structured that the Dungeon Master is a "referee" who portrays a scenario and leads the resolution process to find out how the scenario falls out. It is also true that the conception of the Dungeon Master as a storyteller or circus ring-leader (these differ subtly in expectations) is a very early one, and e.g. Gary Gygax apparently subscribed to what I would consider an incoherent view of the activity. (I'm sure that somebody else would merely see his perspective as all-encompassing rather than incoherent; whatever the case, fact is that it was pretty early that D&D got gripped by the challenging notion that you should be capable of being an impartial referee and an entertaining storyteller at the same time.)

You don't absolutely have to have a prepared scenario to run this sort of a game, but large-scale improvisation requires a much higher degree of procedural hygiene to avoid the game becoming the GM's arbitrary storytelling exercise. When running a sandbox you'll often end up improvising from very sketchy notes, so it's an excellent skill to learn. Meanwhile, though, a well-prepared dungeon environment is very easy to run: as is often remarked, one reason for why D&D is so dungeon-oriented in practical materials might be that it's so easy to referee the fiction within the simple underground environment, with its limited social complexities and well-defined spatial geometry.

\n There is tons of sandbox support in Classic Traveller. The improvisational GMing advice in Bk0 is also still quite good.
The meta-plot stuff doesn't really kick in until 1981 with JTAS#9 and the outbreak of War and I know that lots of people just ignored that stuff in actual play. In terms of "historians", collectors or readers of Trav material this of course become increasingly important. (I have also heard of games that rely on it.)

However in practical terms you can see continuing parallel development of the sandbox (encounter) tools through CT->The Traveller Book->MegaTraveller (and even in Mongoose Traveller)
Obviously there is also a crazy amount of tech building tools...but in hindsight I see these as less important and I think the functional aspects of the evolving Trav game design have suffered from over-emphasis on these lonely fun aspects. (Although I have personally got a lot of pleasure out of them, running several multi-player Naval campaigns using Trillion Credit Squadron, playing Striker before I had access to a spreadsheet program etc!)
IMO the world/sector building is still beautiful though.

rgds
rob

\n Ah, good of you to mention that - I'd already forgotten, better get my affairs in order before then

As Potemkin/Mike is the primary GM for the session, I think, he should probably select the venue he's most comfortable with. (Although D&D is interesting in that technically speaking the task of party organization should fall on the party leader, not the GM, so in practice it's often not necessary for the GM to have a firm handle on social organization of the crew. Depends on the skills of the group, of course, and you can't exactly have party leadership established before a first session.) Both video chat and text chat have been suggested, and I'm up for either myself. Google Hangouts and IRC are respectively the easiest options for me in the two categories. I imagine that we'll use online whiteboards, Google Docs and so on in either case for secondary documentation.

As for the time, mid-afternoon GMT (Mike's last suggestion) would be around 3pm, right? I'm at GMT+2 myself, but currently also being somewhat nocturnal, so I'll likely take a nap before the game. It'd be most convenient if we can get the timing firmed up within the next 8 hours, so I can schedule my napping. An early start is probably better than a late one, all other things being equal, as it's not difficult to join in on-going proceedings mid-session, while the session setup ("logistical phase" as I like to call it) is likely going to eat up an hour or two from a first session, no matter what one does.

Regarding plan of action: unless Mike has some different plans, our initial to-do list will probably look like something like this:
1) Mike gives the low-down on the setting, or we brainstorm the broad strokes if he doesn't have anything in particular. Role of the fantastic, magic, demihumans, religious and ideological nature of the society, technology level, literary flavour - that sort of thing.
2) Whip up some characters according to whatever system framework Mike's starting with.
3) Get the adventure from Mike, or the sandbox context if he's got multiple hooks. Plan, gear up and prepare for action.

The above are all things that can be done "in advance" to various degrees if one feels like it, so Mike shouldn't hesitate to call the session to begin a bit early if it comes to that; it is quite effortless to join a session even after other players have already processed the logistics phase, after all.

\n I'm michaelrburrell @ googlemaildotcom if y'all want to get in touch.

\n Yes, the chat room is available, and I hear that the locals won't mind getting to peek at our proceedings. Most of them are playing a live game today with Jim Raggi, but perhaps somebody'll make an appearance later, depending on how long we'll spend on the channel.

I've got Mike in the chat already, so I guess now it's just a matter of seeing who else we might get.

\n

Also, I found converting my map into descriptions of space that the players are exploring difficult. The map was loose so I had to eyeball distances in play which came up when the players asked about how far the light from their torches spread, and generally the dungeon was so tightly spaced that that would never be a problem (i.e. if a PC has a light he can see everything in sight). Do I need to spread out the distances in my dungeon to make light/movement speed rules applicable?

\nThere's no reason to do anything like that. If your dungeon (and your rules gloss) is such that light and movement speed do not matter, then they don't matter. Not everybody has to fill their games with the same cookie cutter content.

That being said, a single torch doesn't really shed light too far; atmospheric scatter mutes light over distance, as everybody knows For comparison's sake, I recently created a GM screen for OSR D&D and put some numbers in it. ("Real Constants", a list of various useful natural constants from my own play and research.) Looking it over, I set a candle to shed light up to 5 feet, a torch to 10-40 feet (depending on the construction of the torch, mainly) and a lantern 40-60 feet (ditto). When you also account for some activities being light-sensitive, so that the dimness of lightning matters, it becomes easily possible for the party's chosen lightning strategy to become pertinent. Our home campaign regularly features situations where light is insufficient to see the other end of a room from its door, for example - especially when you'd need to see something more than just there maybe being a wall there out in the dark.

Of course these are definitely "expert" considerations of dungeoneering, I wouldn't expect a beginner campaign to pay too much attention to things like lightning conditions, dehydration, social hacking of monster encounters, proper shock entrance tactics, effective scouting and so on; there are many, many things that naturally only come up when the group has sufficient expertise to process the simpler things routinely.

\n

Potemkin:

If you're being a really evil DM, the problem with light isn't just that you can only see a limited distance around you effectively, it's that other people can see you holding the light from an almost unlimited distance, provided nothing is blocking line-of-sight.

\nThat's the general assumption, right? I mean, it's a little tricky with the rules insisting on a "Surprise" roll for monsters as the standard beginning of an encounter but I'd assume that light and noise alert the denizens of the deep to the presence of intruders at a reasonable distance. This is why lamp-shutters and stowed equipment are crucial.

The campaign, however, is in its infancy and I don't want to pile these logistical concerns onto the players until they're confident with standard dungeoneering procedure.

\n Some might reasonably argue that that specialized adventure is *actually* the game whereas what we see as the conventions of an RPG (character-plot driven, idiosyncratic player motivation, XP for story, etc) are the variant!

\n

I've made a post over at RPGnet in the D&D forum just now regarding that actually.

\nYou gunna post a link, you tease?

I'd go so far to suggest that the idea of there being a party of PCs is probably a conceit separate from the hypothetical MMOOWGC situation. Actually, in the game "proper" the players take distinct turns moving hero-pieces across a shared hexmap, each PC having his own party of retainers - vying with other players for gold and glory.

Actually, I think this is often how mainstream culture parses D&D. The D&D episode of Community and this awesome animated song are good examples of what I mean. They portray D&D as a PvP experience in a persistent overworld which really fascinates me.

\n

<
Mostly I'm positing that the early developers have this idealized MMOWGC in their heads and make rules for it that support that.

I doubt it ever much materialized in that idealized form even for them, and certainly other people quickly used it more for the style we associate with the game, with a small, consistent group of friends playing the thing regularly ( especially after it hits Fad Toy Status).

\nLet's be clear off the bat: this style of play never existed, right? It's just an RPG "hyperborea" fantasy.

That being said, there's no reason why we couldn't toss some ideas of what a MMOWGC would be like. Would you start a thread here? Or I will - I want to discuss this.

\n Not with a PvP element, surely? I thought Gygax was all about the peaceful teamwork?

\n

Not with a PvP element, surely? I thought Gygax was all about the peaceful teamwork?

\nCertainly not. The undercurrent (theoretical, and apparently practical as well) was quite clear: high-level PCs would have their own alignments, political commitments and goals, that might potentially segue into conflicts between characters who could have been comrades in arms in the past. Some magic items such as the helm of reverse alignment mostly get their point from this assumed background: they're amusing excuses for team-swapping, a reason for why past friends become the bitterest enemies. (Tim Kask wrote about this a couple years back in a pretty compelling manner, I seem to remember; he should know.)

This is a pretty in-depth topic (mostly because the question is not how the game might work, but how it was in fact historically understood and utilized), and I encourage people interested in studying the hopes and dreams of the early '70s gamers to read e.g. the Dragonsfoot forums, and the articles and interviews by various people who were there. There is quite a bit of information out there. My own current impression of the matter, for what it's worth, is basically the same as Bob's: while the nature of the game might not have elevated into a complexly layered wargame consistently, every time and everywhere, the shared world and the potential of the game to segue into more traditional wargaming was definitely acknowledged. For example, it's quite explicitly known that the first Greyhawk campaign had multiple GMs, character stables, multiple adventuring parties, and such, just like our own on-going campaign does today. The Chainmail connection isn't an accident, either.

\n That's actually a quite nice vision of how D&D might be. Not that different from how it actually is, either, at least the way we play it. The character stable in practice causes everybody to have characters in the same place at the same time, though, as it is so easy to just say that hey if we're going to be spending this entire session messing about with your war here, how about I make up your NPC lieutenant as a player character - sort of a combined opportunity to develop more characters and a conceit for why the player is gabbing with you about your plans at the table despite his own character currently being at the other end of the continent, doing their own thing.

The way I explain the true nature of D&D as an emergent phenomenon is that there is "low-level" play and then there is "high-level" play, and the latter is, indeed, all about individual heroes traipsing around doing their own thing. The point where this game breaks might be a little surprising: it's when you get the idea that same-level characters should stick together as a cadre. I've found that not having this preconception has enabled us to discover a much more natural dynamic of play where characters tend to drift apart when they get to mid-levels, new lower-level characters join them, and the original party branches out into a bunch of alternate storylines. Everybody plays each other's grunts and henchmen, in other words, instead of insisting on keeping the original cadre together when it doesn't feel natural to do so.

In our big campaign a few years back this maturation phenomenon started when individual characters started to get to around 3rd level, after a few dozen sessions of play. One character was ambitious for social position, so he married into a rich merchant family and funded his own mercenary company for the emperor's wars in Italy; another got a religious insight that indicated that he would have to put to rest this ancient pre-Christian pagan god that still existed as a malevolent presence in the dark recesses of the fantasy-Bohemian wilderness; a third quested for a cure to a divine disease he'd procured by stealing from the wrong holy places, ended up turning into an elf, and became a dark magician who ultimately perished by becoming the vessel of a high-level necromancer's rebirth. Then there were also two separate missionary expeditions to the Orient, led by two particularly religious priestly sorts of characters, and a side story regarding a crime spree ending in incarceration and a journey to a penal colony in the distant north.

All of the above storylines were strategic-level concerns in between actual adventures, and they were handled organically in parallel to each other. Generally speaking each player would have their own "main" character who had their own concerns, but they would then also have lower-level characters joining in on other people's stories. Which character you'd play in each adventure would depend on campaign causality (whether a given character was available at a given time and place, or if he was busy somewhere else) and individual motivations; no point bringing a character who didn't care about a given adventure's goals into it. Not all players had their "own" storylines, as this sort of thing depends on what you're interested in; some just want to tag along. Such players would usually keep their characters aloof of commitments, so they could naturally continue playing that one character at a time, jumping between "theaters of operation" as we usually call these different branches of a campaign.

The current "spin-off" campaign in which I'm being a player works exactly like this as well. I personally currently have characters involved in two main storylines: one concerns the setting up of a Skoptsi monastery in Moldova (gaining funding and social acceptance for it by doing great deeds for the locals, basically), while another is about delving into Stonehell dungeon for the cure to a space-slug plague infesting a a Moldovan city. (I think I've got two characters involved in each of these, in somewhat different situations.) These two branches of the campaign, and others that aren't currently active but might come up at any time, exist in the same campaign world and cross over where appropriate.

So all in all, it seems very natural to me to conceptualize D&D as a large, meandering exercise in world-building and wargaming: once we have a campaign setting going, it's easy to utilize its existing lore and established events as springboards for further play. As is natural for my Platonic conception of D&D, I consider most of the above to be natural necessities that devolve directly from the creative agenda and technical strategy of the game; I am not surprised that our own practices resemble the original '70s campaigns in so many ways, as we have just been doing what comes naturally.

\n We've certainly had our PvP arcs as well. For example, the aforementioned elf-turned-into-vessel-of-dark-magic was ultimately set against the entire rest of the crew. I think the player in question even played a second character who participated in the take-down. It's not really much of a problem to have PCs set against each other as long as the creative agenda aligns with it; the usual issues with PvP stem from an agenda conflict where players fail to discuss the nature of the challenge together, and one player ends up being disruptive (for reasons such as being bored and not being included in the decision-making over the real adventure), using character roleplaying as an excuse. If you have the ability to step out of the situation and talk it over between the players, then this isn't much of a problem. Just figure out with the players whether they see a legitimate, interesting challenge in having the PCs fight each other, or if doing that just ruins the scenario.

As for the inverse D&D, that'd be quite interesting! The biggest issue is easily the fact that the normal D&D technical toolset only basically has one way to arrange that low-level situation where each player has individual characters on their own adventures: choose one character at a time, establish their scenario, proffer companion or opposing characters for the others to play (so that they have something to do instead of just watching the proceedings), and then execute the scenario. Repeat with the characters of the other players. The problem here is that it doesn't make much sense for us to first create e.g. six 1st level characters, only to then play individual sessions for each of them in turn - why did we create these other characters if we're only going to focus on this single one's adventures at a time?

It would be possible to finesse this by abstracting things massively (as in, one-roll adventure resolution), so that play can skip from character to character in their own individual adventures in turn. This could perhaps be used as some sort of prologue for the game proper, I could imagine: during the first session you dice and tell about what your characters got up to before they joined together to sail this ship over the edge of the world, or whatever it is that causes the adventurer cadre to actually come together.

\n My friend Sam who played last session wrote up his experiences here. He'd never played in the OSR before, so it's an interesting read.

\n Tuesday could work for me, as well, depending on the exact time!

\n Afternoon all - anyone interested in playing today should assemble here between 2-3 (GMT), all welcome.

\n I wanted to say thank you for letting me try this out yesterday! I checked in three hours early, and we ended up starting early just me, Daumantas (Bodigon) and referEero. We started on a sidequest and Lark the Elf got some solid pathfinding stuff in before almost losing his sister to a hellhound.

However, I checked the character sheets this morning and found Agador, Zizek and Bodigon dead or MIA! What happened, and where was Lark? (If this is the wrong thread for it, just say so)


As for the game, it was about what I expected, including at least as fun as I was hoping! I've never played anything OSR before. I started thinking about it after what ended up being my favourite session of that AW game. It had my gunlugger breaking into a guarded outpost to kill the leader and leave without a trace. I ended up not rolling for almost anything but the initial read a sitch, because I managed to solve the problem of navigating the fiction. It sounds simple, but after years of roleplaying I think that was the first extended conflict which felt like it was solved entirely by doing that. And it was great! The contract of "finding and meeting tactical challenges in a well-defined fictional world", or however you put it in this thread before, was in place for that scene.

And this meeting was like, only that! I've been looking forward to actually play something like this for a long time now, to see if it actually holds what promises I've built up in my head. Turns out it can! Both the hex-crawling and the combat (which in many respect was very much like stuff I've been thinking indie has "solved") was a blast.

\n I don't mind not knowing what happened in detail, but if someone would fill me in on what Lark did for the rest of the session (or where he was left to do nothing, if that's it), that'd be swell.

\n Gah, and we the elves made such a point of being on our guard for them as well! Of course they would strike when our backs were turned.

The part about what happens to absent characters is definitely an interesting read!

\n Regarding initiative rules (I know, this thread is a hodge-podge of random topics), I was pretty happy with my innovations yesterday. As you probably noticed, I sort of clicked with the Moldway initiative system yesterday and rapidly developed it into something more meaningful during play itself. This was a good example of what I mean by organic mechanical innovation through rulings in play, as it arose from my personal relationship to the way the Moldway rules work.

For background context: I like group initiative, but detest the round-by-round initiative rolls used by so many Basic D&D iterations. It's just not a worthwhile way to spend your time to have an extra roll at the start of each and every round merely to find out who acts first that round. This issue of action order doesn't simply matter enough for the amount of bother it causes, by itself.

I also, however, like to innovate regarding what initiative means: I find the traditional sense of "who acts first" to be devoid of realism and excitement. In a split-second combat situation initiative can be so much more, as quick decision-making and situation awareness allows you to make better choices and plainly get inside the enemy OODA loop to disrupt their actions and ideally overrun their ability to react to your action.

My recent home rules have generally used a 3rd edition derived complex individual initiative system that is relatively heavy-weight (we spend about as much time and attention with initiative as with attack rolls), but enables stuff like extra actions per round, exact quantification of how various actions start and stop and get interrupted, paying with initiative score for situation awareness, and stuff like that. Not really something I would even consider porting to an IRC game with a new crew while using the Moldway rules as a base - much too heavy, much too different from how the rest of Moldway operates. Besides, I don't think I have a letters patent from the group to just put fire on the entire Moldway mechanical base and substitute it with my own

Now that I've been living here in Helsinki and been a player, the campaign has been using the LotFP rules as its base, which means return to the Basic initiative system, essentially the same as Moldway. You might imagine that I've thus had my fill of the vapid initiative rolls: nothing exciting ever happens, that initiative roll just shuffles the actions so that sometimes instead of ABAB the actions occur in ABBA or BAAB order.

Anyway, in last night's session I had a vision of how this concept of lightweight d6 initiative should be utilized: you roll the initiatives, and then the difference between the rolls indicates a "series" of combat rounds during which one side or the other holds the initiative without further rolls. So rolls of 2 vs 5 indicate that the latter party holds initiative for three rounds, for example. Such a "series" can be broken by any extraordinary interference in the flow of battle (successful disengagement, one side's leader biting it, etc.), in which case there are simply new initiatives rolled. Each "series" represents an unbroken melee combat at utmost levels of effort, perhaps \xbd-1 minutes or so in length. (So instead of each round being strictly 10 seconds, we assume that each series is a minute long - or perhaps we assume both of these at once.)

So far so good, but the real point comes in considering what it means for a party to hold the initiative during a single series, and what it means for a "series" to end, in fictional terms. For the first point I basically started piling on any advantages that came up for the side with initiative: both sides of the combat dynamic still get their goes, one per round, it's just that the initiative side tends to get better intel and opportunity to act. For examples, the init side gets to choose action last and execute first, the init side may choose to attack or defend (in footwork terms - whether you're giving ground or taking it), the init side may switch weapons at the start of the series without penalty (using that couple of seconds that they stole for it), and so on. Basically, with the initiative you're just treated a bit better in the action negotiations.

As for that second question, I promptly stole the notion of "reorientation action" from my home game - in that system with its minute-long combat rounds each round has a "between bouts" phase in between combat rounds, during which things PCs can do things that are untenable in actual melee; retreat, drinking potions, talking with the enemy or allies, committing to spells for the next round are things that are done at this juncture, the round itself being much too quick and hazardous action for such things.

Applying this concept to Mentzer, I found myself pushing these off-melee tactical actions to the end of individual "series" of rounds, according to the concept as I explain it above. So instead of letting the players deliberate e.g. retreat or reshuffling of melee every round, I delayed that until each individual series finished due to either disruption (somebody did something to disengage the melee) or the series running to its natural end. (Each series with these d6 initiative rolls are 1-5 rounds long, depending on the rolls).

The most dramatic use of these new concepts was in that fight between the General and poor Mithryn: Mithryn was entirely outforced by the 10 HD General, despite its modest unarmed stature, and the situation was only made worse by the General's utter domination in terms of initiative - it's not a fast creature, but even a heavy and slow one can get the jump on you if you stumble, leaving you to scramble for defense while it rains heavy blows on you. This was what happened to Mithryn, who in fact attempted a disengagement action to get out of the lethal series of action rounds before he'd be taken down by the monster. I was pleased with this fight, as I was with the elves vs. the hellhound fight earlier, as they showed concretely how I could make the initiative matter more: the elves had a major advantage in being able to predict who the hellhound was going to jump for each round (thanks to getting to hear its action before taking their own), and the General had an advantage in being able to prevent Mithryn from disengaging from a fight that had turned ill for him.

So that's an interesting thing from the session, at least for me - I can totally understand if the above seems like hot air and GM arbitrariness to other people, but from my viewpoint I was developing new tenets for a slightly different twist on the D&D combat procedure. Making it my own once again, in a sense If this sea-change is allowed to flower, I imagine that my next step will be to decide how missile weapons and magic latch onto this concept of "series" of rounds...

The implicit creative nature of the process is also illuminating to consider, when thinking about the creative dynamics of D&D: as is often the case, this development of new initiative concepts happened largely through the agency the GM has in instructing the mechanical process: I never stopped to explain what I'd realized to the other players, I merely implemented it. I in fact don't know if the others noticed that I was drifting mechanically - either they accepted the way I parsed the fiction into mechanics, or they noticed nothing different, even as the principles behind the combat round logic were undergoing a revolution. Over the long term the players would presumably either tacitly accept the new parsing of the familiar concepts, even if I didn't get around to explaining myself, or they would complain, starting a judicial review process.

\n Interesting stuff!

I noticed the new imitative order but felt discussing it during play would only steal back the time it had liberated. It's a fine system, sure, but brutal as all getout. It was excruciating watching Mithryn stagger under the orge's blows, unable to act for 4 rounds (or suffer opportunity attacks trying to flee) while the orge let loose. In retrospect I feel Mithryn's death was a little unfair and feel the need for a review: having to sit and suffer 3-5 consecutive attack rounds is (a) dull and (b) unreasonably lethal even at high levels. Mithryn's only available action seemed to be to take the attacks or attempt to withdraw (and suffer AoO). A small change could be that for every "bonus" round the initative winner scores over 2 counts to another combat advantage (like disallowing withdrawl, or some other combat trick, disarming attempt etc).

This kind of thinking leads nicely to the creation of a swashbuckler class (conceptually one of my favourites but usually poorly implemented esp. 3.5) that gets specific situational boons for rolls in the initiative round if fighting on his own (much like a Thief's skills to use the Moldvay sensibilities - which I think are a good frame work for finding common ground between players from different play-cultures). I like the idea of having a mutable class system, or at least the capacity for reasoned player invention.

Coming late to play I was largely out of the picture in regards to what this adventure was and any understandings you'd come to with the other players. Perhaps this led in some way to Zizek's demise (which was always coming anyway and I'd rather die avenging another PC than to the proboscis of a random Sturge), but it's not too likely. The master strategy would have been to wait until the thieves took their spoils and withdrew, stabilising Bodigon if possible, then following their mule-tracks and harrying their retreat, hopefully fatally wounding them. Zizek could have then claimed the loot and XP (for ill or good).

\n I recognise the shifting nature of our experimental play and don't hold you accountable for "getting it wrong" or anything like that, I'd just like to advocate for a peer-review of this system. Once I manage to get back into the DM chair I will certainly be testing innovations that still reward a good initiative roll but translates into more nuanced results; I am sickened by the concept of multiple attack rolls per round (especially as fast monsters, etc, have multiple attacks figured into their stats already) and anything more than two/round gets me very hot and bothered on either side of the DM-screen. I would rather give a damage boost to a single attack roll on a good initiative rather than describe how its victim is incapable of action (which produces similar rewards for good rolling but cuts down on the number of rolls per combat significantly). Frankly, if you were looking to save time in the procedure, there are more balanced and interesting ways of doing it.

Alternatively, perhaps Attack of Opportunity needs a dark twin: Something like "If a "to hit" roll is missed the victim can elect to seize the opportunity to withdraw from immediate range without suffering AoO." So, if the General had missed one of his blows then Mithryn could have interrupted the combat flow to withdraw from the immediate multi-attack being performed on him (although not from combat all together).

\n I emphasize once more: my suggestion above does not give anybody multiple attacks per round. Everybody is still getting one attack per round. If you think that I wrote differently, then read again (or point out where I write thus, so I can go back and fix it).

But insofar as the procedure goes, we're on the same page - test, implement, revise, see where the process goes. Imagining the D&D rules as a finished edifice is simply putting faith in the wrong elements of the game's system. Trust the process of revision, not the momentary state of the law.

\n

The only issue I see (aside from working out the specifics of just how much of an advantage having the initiative gives you) is that it must be possible to break out of a series. There should be a number of ways to interrupt the series and/or force a new roll before it's over. Eero, you mention a few above, and I think this is a good and important direction to go. A group which is facing 5 rounds of lost initiative against an overwhelming foe must have some good strategic options on hand rather than being forced to weather the 5 rounds. Fighting back is one good option: essentially, accepting the conditions of the fight and engaging in it fully seems right and proper to me. But other options might be worth considering.

For instance (and, for all I remember, maybe we even did this last night), when Zizek landed a powerful blow against the general (6 hit points of damage to the head has to be a pretty serious hit, as it would kill most men), I feel a good argument could have been made for that triggering a new initiative roll, perhaps allowing Mithryn to escape while the ogre was knocked off-balance momentarily. (Again, maybe this is what happened anyway - I don't particularly remember).

\nI agree with this as a design strategy statement, we're in harmony on the proposed goals of this initiative system idea. While I personally don't think that initiative played in this manner would always be decisive, at times it might well be a very good idea to be able to force a new initiative roll to seize the advantage. A lot depends on if you're fighting a conservative stationary battle, or relying on complex maneuver, as the latter is much more difficult if the opponent is on top of things and you aren't.

Regarding the General's reaction to Zizek's blow, it suffices to say that there are elements of the scenario in play there that influenced by judgement, but which I'm loathe to reveal before it's clear whether anybody's going back into that scenario. (I am of course discussing the specific mechanical abilities of the General here.) I will say that I considered the angle you're presenting, and judged it to my satisfaction, which holds in hindsight. In the situation that you think you saw, your judgement would be mine as well - such a surprising blow would well warrant a new initiative check.

The next interesting question I'll have to ponder on regarding this new idea is whether it warrants adding some slightly better tools for initiative manipulation to the game. The Basic D&D initiative is basically a random roll, with few ways to influence it, but with the slightly increased importance it takes here it might be worthwhile to have a few basic ideas for how to guarantee a better initiative score. There are of course a lot of stock options in D&D's mechanical history, I'll need to see if there are some that resonate particularly elegantly with this notion of "round series", and the conceit of group initiative.

\n

Yes, it's the lack of strategic options apparent that bothers me, truly. I keep putting myself in Mithryn's shoes: if the combat sequence is so engaging that I cannot end it without taking injury, what options do I have? The best option is to weather the attacks and hope your assailant misses, rather than to flee and suffer an auto-hit, and that seems unintuitive.

\nI think that my suggested action for defensive retreat is entirely fair in this regard, and it's not either giving the enemy a free strike nor is it merely passively weathering their attacks: you spend your action, get a chance to break off the series, and if that fails, you still get a substantial AC bonus. Seems fair to me. It doesn't guarantee that you can escape every melee every time, but it's likely enough that after at most a couple of rounds of combat you'll be able to get out of underfoot and get the chance to run away. Frankly, to me this seems like the ideal balance: I want a melee combatant to be able to force combat on another, but I also want the other side to be able to run away if they don't want the fight.

I guess it could be even more powerful, but if you could just declare action to get out of the exchange of blows, then that pretty much obviates the whole concept of battlefield control - we're back in the "you hit, I hit" paradigm, where fighters just trade blows until one side decides that it's time to run rather than be taken down.

Of course, if the entire notion of melee being a dangerous pressure cooker doesn't entice, then I understand how this course of thinking doesn't seem appealing. I like having combats be sweaty, dangerous affairs where people can get confused, afraid, and otherwise irrational and murky - friction of war, as I like to misuse Clausewitz

\n

you spend your action, get a chance to break off the series, and if that fails, you still get a substantial AC bonus.

\nThere's the concession that'll get be back around the table (so to speak, I wouldn't leave if you paid me). AC bonus going on seems a little clunky but it's a good sop to my sense of fair play. I reckon we can nuance this into something much more rewarding though. \n

Of course, if the entire notion of melee being a dangerous pressure cooker doesn't entice, then I understand how this course of thinking doesn't seem appealing. I like having combats be sweaty, dangerous affairs where people can get confused, afraid, and otherwise irrational and murky - friction of war, as I like to misuse Clausewitz

\nI think most everyone would agree. It's kind like saying "I like my comedies to be funny!" - that combat is supposed to be tense and suspenseful is a given, yo. Though it's probably safe to say that everyone interprets tactics and combat differently when you get down to it (we're armchair generals to a man after all). My general notion is that, while it feels realistic for you to be able to lock someone into combat, there should be a range of strategic options available to the defender - many of them negative but several preferable to loss of life that I would assume to be similar to "real world" events. It's at this stage that I think that forward thinking by the players about strategy, formation, command etc can be rewarded - that moment where the rat men are raining blows on your shields and the line's about to falter! Then the fighter leaps over the beleaguered henchmen's shield wall to stab the rat-king between his beady eyes! D&D perfection. But maybe that's the point we're at already? The fighter's leap-attack would be the interruption to the ratmen's initiative victory, permissable in the situation because the fighter in question chose to hid behind the shield wall for that very purpose. Maybe this just needs to be enshrined in a few good "creedos" or something.
\n

Seems like maybe you'd want an option to attack the opponent's initiative, throwing them into disarray or something, instead of attacking their hitpoint pool.

\nI like this. Consider it filed away under "Iiiiinteresting..!"\n

+1 to Christopher's idea of attacking the opponent's initiative; pulling a maneuver that can disrupt the enemy's attention long enough to force a new init roll. One thing I like in particular about this: it would give tactical benefit to really minor spells and legerdemain. A sparkle of lights or a small sound off the enemy's left flank might be all you need to potentially throw him off his initiative.

\nINTERESTING..!

\n I like that, Contra! My only grumble is that I hate mixing cards and dice - there's something about the physical change that creates mental turbulence for me and suggest we're entering a combat mini-game rather than a concordant extension of the world's rules as established.
It's totally instinctive though, rationally your system sounds like a lot of fun.

\n I just happen to open a thread about this, based on a card-based combat system Eero developed years ago.

\n

I have a strong feeling that 3\u20135 rounds of initiative is actually enough to swing pretty much any important fight in my game guaranteed.

\nThat's my misgiving in a nutshell. So much depends on a good initiative!

Eero and I discussed my next character. Potentially a homebrewed "Shield Bearer" class that has some robust custom shield rules - perhaps the retro-inclusion of what we'd recognise as a "Tank" roll in a MMORPG in low-level OSR play.

The current shield-rulings for Shield Bearers is being parsed as: "Shield Bearers fighting defensively gain 4 AC against 'to hit' rolls until they are injured by an attack, at which point the shield is considered 'knocked aside' and the SB looses their shield's AC bonus until their next turn when they can elect to fight defensively again."

I can feel my routes in 4E coming through here, a bit, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

\n Ah, you were thinking of making that a class exclusive rule. Hmm.

My own inclination would be to have the Shield Bearer be just a Servant or Fighter - I like to not have a separate class for every character concept, and it's not that strong of a concept. The Fighter could have access to an improved shield technique just because he's Fighter, the Servant by virtue of his skill-adaptation mechanic - be the servant of a great fighter, you learn to bear his arms and help him in a fight a bit.

As for the shield rule, as we discussed, I much prefer stronger shields than standard D&D gives - that +1 AC is ridiculously piddly for such a central tool of war.

My currently favoured alternative of the ideas we discussed, for the Moldway context, is this: "A shield provides its user +2 AC against a single opponent, or +4 for Fighters. This bonus goes away if the opponent knocks the shield aside; a hit that strikes the shield does it, or a maneuver. The shield can be reinstated in any break in the exchange of blows - either maneuver for the chance, or reinstate at the end of the series at the latest if using that notion."

\n I was considering how many variant builds have been forged more around the DPS, Tank and Support roles than aroung the Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard roles. Even to the point where the later mix as flavor with the former to create these builds. I've seen Dex based tanks, where the character distracts the enemy but keeps avoiding his attacks, I've seen Tank Wizards, who use magical shields and magic armor to withstand greats amount of damage. I know this is probably going too far from D&D roots, but do you think it would be viable to built class options around this instead?

\n

Also, the initiative system is cool. I'd be interested to hear whether Eero feels like he has different aims for this system, as opposed to the 3E-style one he used previously. Or whether this mechanical flowering is simply an expression of the same goals under different constraints / different inspiration (namely, Moldway initiative as a starting point).

What are those goals? One of them seems to be getting at the nature of melee as a pretty relentless thing that's difficult to disengage from. Another seems to be having interesting options generated from initiative, rather than just a first-round strike advantage.

\nMy personal creative goals are the same, it's just a different campaign context here. Your points about the nature of combat are perceptive, I do indeed have ambitions there that run counter to the mainstream of D&D thought.\n

I was considering how many variant builds have been forged more around the DPS, Tank and Support roles than aroung the Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard roles. Even to the point where the later mix as flavor with the former to create these builds. I've seen Dex based tanks, where the character distracts the enemy but keeps avoiding his attacks, I've seen Tank Wizards, who use magical shields and magic armor to withstand greats amount of damage. I know this is probably going too far from D&D roots, but do you think it would be viable to built class options around this instead?

\nI dislike the video game combat role classifications personally because of their artificiality and resulting shallowness in their ability to speak about humanity; those roles mainly exist as an artifice of the way D&D hitpoint rules and combat rounds were transferred into the digital medium. That does not prevent other people from working with them, of course, if they're considered creatively interesting.

\n Yes, I definitely like that this experiment is proceeding with Moldway; it is a net positive. (I've especially enjoyed playing with honest-to-god nice woodland elves first time in 15 years, and I'm also fond of that idea I had for a new direction with the Basic D&D initiative system.) I feel that this bears emphasizing, as people don't seem to usually consider that something may well be a good thing even if e.g. I personally would not have made that choice. If I were a perfect monad, self-sufficient in everything, I wouldn't even play with you jerks.

As for the role of rules, that's pretty much my stance, as I've been trying to explain it: the actually interesting element of old school D&D that is most relevant today is not necessarily in the specific mechanical conceits it happens to have (although there are interesting and highly relevant details there as well, among the should I say less successful notions), but rather in the systemic process behind those mechanics: the role that mechanics have in a rpg is conceptualized completely differently in older D&D than it is in e.g. trad games, new D&D or Forgite design. It's a fresh change of pace even if you've seen everything else already.

And yes, go and write about constructive play whenever you feel you're ready. As I said at the start of the thread, it's one less problem for me if people write what needs to be written about this without my having to do it myself

\n That's the beauty of it, DW, you have all these ambitions and ideas generated from playing a character and then -WHAM- 0 HP! It's an essential part of the game experience: ambitions and motivations for characters spawn really naturally even after a few minutes of fictional positioning. I think humans, generally, are really good at justifying information received into a motivation for new action very quickly - your connection to and plans for Bodigon are emblematic of empathy for a character and his world. It's what gives us our PC preservation instincts in dangerous dungeons and probably kept Bodigon alive much longer than the luck of the dice might've otherwise.

\n

Ya, I get that the game you guys are playing on IRC is not "Eero's game". Is this thread still the right place to ask about Eero's thoughts on OSR D&D? Or is this now just a thread for the the IRC game? For now I'll assume I can ask more about "Eero D&D" - as always, others are welcome to come in with their own thoughts on this.

\nPoint. I understood your questions in light of the recent IRC game discussion. That game differs in many ways from the mechanical approaches I took a couple years back for a tabletop game.\n

One thing I wasn't sure about with your Initiations system was the 1/level rough limit. It seems to me that this is too limiting to describe all the different things that characters might be good at. Do you find with this limit that you also have a more informal character traits going on?

\nYes. To be specific, the initiation system is predicated on "one big thing" structuration of fictional space, same as e.g. FATE aspects, D&D feats or such: it presumes that each initiation, feat, or whatever we call them, is a fictionally pretty interesting, "big" thing. It does not suit well for codifying smaller details, even when those details might be locally pretty important.

A good example of this are languages: the way the initiation system would codify languages is by presuming whatever as the default case, and including an initiation such as "Multilingual", which might then e.g. allow the player to establish foreign languages equal character level that the character knows, writing them into a list under this initiation. This is obviously far from ideal in many situations (although that is a respectable initiation per se), as real linguistics are much more nuanced than that. It does, however, conform to the primary purpose of the initiation system - namely, control over the width and breadth of information.

(The point of the information control thing is simply that the notion of "feats" or "initiations" enables us to provide constructive limits to how much information we need to or may encode about our characters - at some point you no longer gain mechanical benefits from establishing more identity elements, because you don't have any more feat slots to dedicate to the purpose. The rule tells us what information to preserve and what to ignore, in other words. That's the formalistic nature of the rule in comparison to a completely organical approach, in which you can theoretically gain an infinite amount of mechanical advantage, as long as you can establish your character as a member of every cabal, ethnic group, school of philosophy or whatever else that ever might provide some advantage.)

Later on I've come to conclude that my system requires another step "down" from the big identity elements that the initiations offer. The game works well with these "small" things being informal and largely unwritten, but there are psychological and methodological advantages to keeping track of them as well. Some things are even practically mandatory to record, such as the exact list of spells your magic-user knows; these are really no more significant details than what languages your character knows, or whether or not he's read a book about dragons, but you can see how it'd be difficult to play the game if you didn't track whether or not your character knows Magic Missile.

My latter-days solution to recording this sort of "chaff" about character has been a white space in the character sheet called "Notes" or "Details", and an instruction to the players to write down whatever things that they desire to maintain as records; such records will then form compelling evidence in the matter later on, should it come up for some reason. In other words, I punt the problem of what's important and what's not to the players, and let them act as their own curators. Some prefer lean character spec where they rely on oral tradition ("Hey, we found out ten sessions back that my character speaks this one language"), while others fill their sheet with minute scrawling about the most inconsequential details in the hopes of garnering some advantage from it down the road. Very similar to how inventory and encumbrance are handled, in fact.

With this principle in place, and a clear delineation between the properly feat-slotted things and inconsequential "chaff", I've found it easy to be more liberal with the latter. Like, your character reads a book about dragons, hey you get +2 for dragon-lore checks - and it doesn't necessarily have to be just this one check. Perhaps that's something you'll just remember for this adventure and ignore later, or maybe you'll write it down. Maybe you'll stop writing them down after the tenth one, and just trust in that you'll find it easy enough to establish this condition anew if and when you actually need it

My latter-days mechanical border-control "initiations" and "chaff" has pretty much focused on dropping some less useful initiations and making them into incidental details instead. This particularly goes for the skill initiation - an individual skill, even one classically used by adventurers, is just too boring to be a full-blown initiation most of the time. Players still can get that "Expert acrobat" initiation if they really want it, and they'll get that bonus die for it; however, they could just write it down in their chaff that they used to be an acrobat, and rely on the GM applying that as a modifier to checks or whatever.

One important formalistic feature of the chaff is that the chaff can't have stable mechanical associations, by the way: you can write in your chaff that you used to be an acrobat (or that you know a language, or a spell, or are a member of the local Rotary chapter), but you can't write down mechanical consequences of this: if your feature is so special, specific, interesting and important that you need to have guaranteed mechanical representation for it, then that'll need to be an initiation instead. The chaff is basically just fictional positioning detail that's been given extra weight by writing it down.

The chaff is at this point a bit too green a concept for me to be entirely certain where it goes - I should play actively with the system to find out, and that's not been the case for a while now, as I've been here in Helsinki playing with LotFP instead.

\n So, I have to ask:

Has anyone actually started/attempted the task of rereading the various threads on this topic and trying to pull out principles, concepts, and rules? It wouldn't be hard to do, just time-consuming. Fortunately, Eero is very amenable to answering questions, and picking out specific details (the way we have with "feats/initiations" here) is an easy way to receive more concrete thoughts on any specific mechanical feature or conceit.

\n Oh, that looks basically good to me. I would add that "letting go of intentionality" is something you need to do as a GM, if you're living under the impression that it is your task to predesign what the game will become. This is different from goal-oriented, intentional play, which should very much be an emphasis: in my eyes one of the biggest differences between the player role in old school D&D and the player role in traditional roleplaying games is the presumption of intentionality in D&D: the game assumes, rewards and supports players forming goals and striving for them. The game's procedures reflect this: the GM can do almost nothing, while the players can do almost anything, when it comes to actually initiating action. If the players aren't being intentional, if they just twitch randomly and spout nonsense at the game table, then that's the quality of your game right there.

\n That sounds about right to me. In Eero's vision of old-school D&D (and I'd say this is probably a common one among OSR group and goes way back to the roots of the hobby), the GM provides the material for play (in the form of adventure hooks, spouting off about rosebushes, and the like) and negotiates outcomes to actions, but it's entirely the players who drive the action forward.

The players' job is to initiate action and decide on the pace of play. The GM responds to that and resolves actions as they are presented to her, quite in contrast to many more modern games, where the GM is a very active role and develops the story, which players then respond to (e.g. Sorcerer's Bangs). The idea that the GM is a "referee" is a very apt analogy here: not an initiator but a negotiator and resolver. The players control the pace of the game by the way they interact with the GM. (An important point to remember if the game seems to be stalling or moving along too slowly for your liking; for this reason, in many groups, an ability to generate active and even reckless play is considered to be a valuable player quality, simply because it makes the game exciting. Of course, balancing that against smart tactical decisions is always a challenge: maybe the biggest challenge for a player in this style, in fact.)

So the players engage with the GM and the challenges of play at a pace of their choosing, and the GM responds to that by resolving their actions and giving them answers at the appropriate pace. (Note that this is not necessarily related to the fictional pace of events: you could gloss over the events of two days in a single roll, and you could spend 20 minutes debating the details of how your character tumbles down the stairs in the seconds before the oil is set on fire.)

\n The sun has set on the seventh day! Gather, ye brave, at Habavaara! And face dangers untold!

\n Very true! And our game(s) involve discussion of the same topic, as well. It's a very healthy and informative way to discuss these issues. You can go from theory to demonstration back to theory to more experimentation, and so on.

\n Would you happy to post transcripts of any of your sessions up? I'd be keen to see examples of the kind of play you're doing, but I don't think I can join in at the moment to see it first hand.

\n If I'm any judge of creative interests, some very basic maintenance work should suffice: a new clearly titled thread specifically about the online campaign, a clear mission statement, instructions for how to get online, dates and times published 2-4 days in advance of sessions, and some public after-action reporting so interested parties get a sense for what's going on. I would be surprised if these simple steps didn't fix the recruitment and scheduling difficulties. Obvious, really - of course we're having trouble getting a quorum of players if we're basically relying on people stumbling to the chat at the right time by accident. I don't think anybody expect Paul, Daumantas, Mike and myself even knew about yesterday's session, and of those both Daumantas and Paul showed up after Mike had already left

Speaking of which, Daumantas has been making noises about playing more tonight or tomorrow. As it happens, my plans for tonight fell through, so I'll be available.

I should clarify that the above is an observation and a recipe, not particularly a call to action; if I felt strongly about it, I would do the above myself. As you know, I technically speaking have plenty of other stuff to do as well, so I'm relatively agnostic about more play - I have enjoyed the sessions so far quite a bit, and would be interested in seeing more, but not enough to particularly worry about when or whether there is another session in the near future.

\n I saw an IRC game mentioned somewhere in the thread and simply assumed it was closed to the public. The thread itself is dominated (rightfully so) by subject matter experts; I figured those details were materializing in private email threads, phone calls, and so on between those same folks.

\n We are using IRC exclusively, and the game is open to all comers.

Habavaara. We might have a game today, in fact, so feel free to join if you're interested.

If you have a standalone IRC client, or want to use a different web client, the info you need is:
server: open.ircnet.net
channel: #habavaara

If you have some kind of technical problem that's stopping you from connecting, feel free to contact me via PM, I'll try to help you through it.

If you have doubts whether you'll be messing up our fun, don't. The more bodies we can throw at a problem that don't require payment upfront like retainers do, the happier we'll all be. I mean that sincerely!


We might move to voice-chat in the undisclosed future and we might want fewer people if thousands show up. We'll post on this or a sister thread if that happens. In the meantime, the above holds true - everyone welcome, IRC only, Habavaara.

\n You don't need to conjure with my name all the time, Mike - I don't actually have divine properties. The traditional old school name for the campaign is "Grey Sands campaign".

(The traditional old school name for your fantasy adventure campaign is created by taking the name of the first home base or dungeon presented to the players. The more you know!)

\n You can also stop in and just watch (well, read, I suppose), and then decide if you want to jump in or not.

\n Huh; and there you guys are, playing right now.

\n

You don't need to conjure with my name all the time, Mike - I don't actually have divine properties. The traditional old school name for the campaign is "Grey Sands campaign".

(The traditional old school name for your fantasy adventure campaign is created by taking the name of the first home base or dungeon presented to the players. The more you know!)

\nHa ha, it's not sycophantic by any means (can you imagine if I was that guy?), I'm just using you brand to piggyback promote the game a bit. "Oh man, Eero Tuovinen?" says Johnny Public, "Doesn't he have wacky, publicised opinions about old school D&D?" As a descriptive Eeroverse is actually more communicative than originally thought.

Greysands Campaign is fine. At this point "the game we're in" seems to be working.

How did play go last night? ...and I guess it's on me to start the new thread, huh?

\n Poor Veav!

I thought you might find this useful:\n

If any character
does something which could trigger a trap (such as walking over a
certain point), the trap will be sprung on a roll of 1-2 (on Id6). The
DM must check for each character passing the spot until the trap is
either sprung or safely passed by all.

\nSeems like it gives the point-man a little safety and the rest of the party a little risk!

\n It looked like Eero was having the lead guy trigger the trap no matter what. Though I'm not certain of that.

\n Of course a decent principal might be to roll 1d6 against the marching order and that poor soul triggers the trap (if there are more than 6 adventurers, simply clump them and have the trap affect the whole group - teaches 'em for bunching in a dungeon - or roll a larger die?). The probabilities are the same so you could use whichever is more convenient. Another arrow in your DM quiver.

Now I'm unsure, are we going to keep using this thread or are we going to jump altogether over to the new thread?

\n

Of course a decent principal might be to roll 1d6 against the marching order and that poor soul triggers the trap

\nI don't know that I like this - it means that with 6+ adventurers you are always going to trigger the trap - it's just a question of who. Seems a bad mindset for the GM to be in.

Obviously with rolling 1d6 for each person the trap is *likely* to trigger, but it's possible it might never go off. In fact, just did a bit of maths - there's about a 1/3 chance that the trap wouldn't trigger if you roll 1d6 for each of 6 people.

\n I'm aware of that 1/3 trap-springing chance in Moldway, so that particular bit wasn't an issue for Veav's unfortunate stair-delvers yesterday. (Not that I apply that rule literally - it should obviously depend on the level of maintenance and nature of the "trap" how likely it is to go off on you.) I was mostly intrigued yesterday by the realization that there is no trap-detection or general awareness check of any sort in the Moldway procedure - if you don't say that your character is being careful, and the trap triggers on you, it's an automatic hit and time for saving throws.

Compared to rules that allow you a dice roll to detect or avoid a trap, the Moldway system is quite unforgiving about traps. (Especially and specifically compared to things like combat: your character does not generally speaking just impale himself on the opponent's weapon if you don't explicitly declare a dodge.) Basically the only credible defense you have is explicit fictional positioning: you've gotta say that you're watching out for traps, for the assumed default state of your character is optimistic idiocy. Of course the "watching" might not help much, either, as the only kind of watching the system knows about is taking entire Turns at a time to search things for that piddly 1/6 chance to find stuff.

My own philosophy of mechanization for D&D generally runs towards more consistency in the player/character relationship, which usually means assuming somewhat more character autonomy - as I often say, the player is the character's superego, not the ego, and definitely not the acting mind. If he were, the character would forget to bring food, water and torches - heck, he'd probably forget to breathe, considering players

Sometimes this spirit of "you're not your character and we cannot have you micromanaging his farts" makes life easier for the players, such as when I roll various wits dice to see if the character might have realized to do something the player didn't explicitly say, such as be on the lookout for traps. Other times it increases the challenge, as the player can't be assumed to have total control over the character's feelings, either, and therefore I find it legit to have players roll about things like fear, exhaustion, boredom, lust, and such, which all might cause the character to act against player desire when his control relaxes. I suppose I like to have the characters be a bit more like hapless lemmings than a glove the player wears

\n Eero,

I have some more questions for you about this whole D&D thing!

1. I asked this in more detail in the other thread, but it probably makes more sense to talk about it here.

How much do you prep as the GM for a game like this? Clearly, once the game is rolling, and things have been established, the work required drops significantly and becomes rather player-driven. But in the beginning, given your interest in offering multiple plot hooks, how much do you bring to the table right off the bat, and how much can be improvised as you go along? Do you have a 'stable' of modules on hand, for example, and just look for excuses to drop them in to the gameworld, or other techniques?

2. On a related topic: you have explained that your own vision of D&D fantasy here is somewhat more "realistic", and draws more on real-world history and less on D&D tropes (like Elves and Orcs and magic swords). Given that, how do you justify the existence of horrible monsters, and bizarre dungeon environments? Is it all handwaved away, or is there a premise which is used to explain how a group of adventurers walking down the road can run into some supernatural beast, and why there are caverns full of traps, monsters, and treasure (and, more to the point, in several locations near wherever the characters turn out to be)? How do you approach this, and how much of it is thought through in detail, as opposed to just ignored as one of the requirements for play?

3. On telegraphing difficulty to the players.

When something is potentially difficult and/or dangerous, we have to carefully consider how it's presented to the players. Is it obvious that the danger is great, or should it "look" the same as the rest of the world, and or is this a case of "the players will find out about it the hard way"?

I can see this being an important issue in two regards:

a) When the players are presented with adventure hooks, how much do they know about the danger involved? Is it up to them to do investigate and pick up information, and, if so, how hard is it to do, how much is given away freely, and how much must be fought for?

In our IRC game thus far, adventure hooks are presented more in terms of Colour (Hey, there's something about Love, and a sleeping princess! Hey, some halflings want an escort!), and the players following up on them can only guess at the level of danger/reward involved. How much effort do you put into telegraphing these elements to the players, and how much do you let them just figure it out slowly over time ("Ok, we've lost two parties in that cavern.... maybe we'll leave it alone until we've leveled up significantly")?

I know that in some forms of hex crawl-style games, there's an expectation that things get more dangerous based on their location (e.g. the further away from "base camp", the more dangerous the adventures might be). Is there anything like this in your games?

b) In a smaller scale, when dealing with scary or dangerous stuff in a dungeon (for example), you often to get more information from the players. Someone wants to fool around with the lever that you secretly know is connected to a deathtrap - you'll probably want to know what, exactly, the character is doing with that lever, and is there any chance they might pull it, accidentally or deliberately?

In this kind of situation, asking for more details could be seen as telegraphing potential danger to the player. ("These skeletons are potentially a threat, not just Colour, so I'm asking you in great detail about just how you approach them.")

Do you see this as potentially problematic or not? How do you deal with it in play? I've been trying to figure it out in our game, but I don't quite have a handle on your particularly approach to this (potential) problem just yet.

\n Eero,

Excellent answers, as usual. However, I have a few small follow-up questions:

1. In terms of campaign prep, that's a pretty thorough answer regarding the current exercise we have going. However, I'm taking this thread as being about your homestyle D&D, more generally. So how much did you prep, where along that spectrum you described, for your home campaign? That's what I was really curious about here.

2. That's an excellent overview of "realism" and how it fits into your conception of bizarre D&D things existing in a "historical" Europe. However, I thought I read you earlier saying something about how you had these ancient snake-men, and somehow their legacy was tied into the existence of dungeons? Perhaps some idea about how moving underground was like traveling into another plane of existence, further and further from "normal" reality? Or am I imagining things here?

3. That's a great answer, again. One more followup question: do you ever concern yourself that attention to detail might "clue in" a player about the danger inherent in a certain situation? For instance, someone crossing a bridge without a trap on it might just say, "I cross the bridge", and the GM is free to carry on describing what's on the other side. However, if the GM knows there's a trap on the left-hand side of the bridge, he or she should logically ask the player: "Hang on, are you walking on the left, or on the right?" This can potentially "clue in" the player to the existence of danger (or opportunity, at the very least). How do you approach this aspect of play? I've noticed that you handle it quite well in actual play, but I'm not sure what your guiding principles might be (I'm not as confident of being able to recreate your GMing style here, in other words).

\n

3. That's a great answer, again. One more followup question: do you ever concern yourself that attention to detail might "clue in" a player about the danger inherent in a certain situation? For instance, someone crossing a bridge without a trap on it might just say, "I cross the bridge", and the GM is free to carry on describing what's on the other side. However, if the GM knows there's a trap on the left-hand side of the bridge, he or she should logically ask the player: "Hang on, are you walking on the left, or on the right?" This can potentially "clue in" the player to the existence of danger (or opportunity, at the very least). How do you approach this aspect of play? I've noticed that you handle it quite well in actual play, but I'm not sure what your guiding principles might be (I'm not as confident of being able to recreate your GMing style here, in other words).

\nWhen the stakes are high, I generally start these types of situations by affirming the fictional positioning among the group. This positioning includes current character intents and such. This process of affirmation may indeed clue the players in on there being something awry, but it's also sort of too late for them to anything about it at that point; there is technical meaning to shouting in a quick "I back away!" or something of the sort, as it illustrates the mentality of the character, and his ability to react quickly and decisively, but it's not a panacea that'll automatically save you, because when the GM needs to ask you're presumably already in the deep of it.

If a player tries to contest walking into a trap due to the GM introducing it in the wrong order somehow from player viewpoint, then I just patiently go over the fictional sequence of events at hand, and have the player judge it with me: how is your character actually making any choices here, or could it be the case that you're rapidly reacting to meta concerns, such as your knowing what just now happened to this other character around the corner? The vast majority of players will be reasonably fair when faced with such a Socratic method, and I personally feel like my hands are somewhat tied from doing anything more than insist forcefully on my own opinion; if a player is absolutely committed to having their own character live unreasonably, the only recourse I have is to state the situation clearly to the floor (the group, that is), declare my opinion that the player is in my opinion not attempting to achieve a good faith realistic resolution, and then let them have their way. After that a lot depends on the nature of the creative relationship - could range from continuing play with the rest of the group sort of mocking the pisshead subtextually for being unwilling to take the game like an adult (sort of "he's playing with training wheels" attitude), to being understanding and accomodating towards the child among the group, to the player being subtly shamed so that they'll be very keen to prove their fairness in the future.

To be clear, those last parts of that negotiation progression are extremely rare, I have had to give up on fictional positioning negotiations like that for real like one time in a thousand resolution situations, between several scores of players. It is much more common for it to be the case that once I've explained how I think the situation went, what I thought the player had voiced as their action, and the player does the same, that we find that we have reasonable grounds for compromise. It is definitely the case that the GM's personal control mania or tendency towards taking sides is a much, much bigger potential issue in these discussions than a player being genuinely unwilling to have their character face the consequences of a fair scenario. (A fair scenario is one where the fictional event is clearly a valid possibility to occur, and the process of resolution is being fair.) The key is to recognize that how the player perceives the game matters too, and even if you feel like they had fair warning and a beat to react to it, it's possible that their attention was distracted, or yours was, and you're simply seeing the situation in different light. The mature individual makes way and compromises, instead of trying to enforce absolutely perfect obedience to his own vision for the sake of polishing your authority.

\n Avidly taking notes here... or at least attempting to internalise for mental regurgitation next I'm at table. I enjoy the clarity with which you walk us through the methodology... pedagogy? \n

The game's nature is such that you are at times your own legal counsel, although most good groups tend to have at least one or two players who are interested enough in the process qua process that they'll counsel everybody else about precedent, positioning and possible arguments in their favour (or against them, as the case might be). It's not a magically perfect system, though, so it's possible for the table dynamic in a certain session to be such that a wise GM paddles backwards especially much, paying particular attention to drawing out genuine player concord and cooperation on slaughtering their characters in amusing ways. The goal of the process is not to have dead characters, but rather to have the players enthusiastically agreeing with you about how fair and legit even the most astounding outcomes in the game have been.

\nLast you were a player under me I recall you picked up the Moldvay "suggestion" of being the party's Caller, legal counsel for a players if ever there was one. Obviously there were practical concerns - new players who mightn't know Moldvay's tight dungeon legal-defence positioning - but I'm interested in how you see the roll of Caller, whether you use it in your OSR games elsewhere and if you see any merit in a broader use of this play-feature? Could the Caller take on DM rolls of a certain kind (wandering monster, say) and lift a little of the work-load?

\n

My own favourite is the "logistics manager" or "NCO", who centralizes supply management and can buy and sell routine materials to the party, thus freeing up the GM from answering questions like "what does a lantern cost" or "can I buy chain mail in this town".

\nI know there was some interest in some sea-hex crawling this weekend. When I've been doing that, I explicitly ask the players to appoint a whole bunch of roles along these lines. Some are best handled by experienced players, but some are a great ways for low level people to get in the game too. We have the boatswain as logistics manager, some combination of captain and mate as strategic and tactical callers and often negotiator and morale checker, a lookout who establishes direction and distance and other stakes for encounters as well as weather, a steersperson/coxswain who has to make constitution checks if you want to pull advanced maneuvers and also tracks rower endurance in long engagements, etc.

Usually nowadays there's someone who's been transformed into a wind or water elemental to make the boat faster too. Last night it was a level one dwarf who went mad in a spree of boat-crushing and they had to leave him after he took their enemies' treasures to the deeps with him.

Having a job is fun.

\n That decision about goblins is totally artistic - I would be a fucking idiot of I said that yeah, you gonna not be able to have folklore critters like goblins in your game

Then again, it should be obvious that this being an artistic choice means that one is a better choice than the other for different games and situations. For example, in our big campaign, set in a "fantasy-Europe" essentially similar to that in Ars Magica and such, it is simply not possible to have tribal monster goblin like TSR does - it's just too weird to have like this intelligent non-human civilization living liminated with human communities, while also pretending like this is the Netherlands in the 16th century. So in that kind of context you gotta split the TSR goblin in twain: all adventures where goblins are tribes that live in ruins or dungeons become encounters with "human goblins", essentially forest-living ethnic groups of humans; goblins that come up in mystical, magical, folkloric contexts can then be "real" goblins of the fairy tales.

For a different campaign where it's cool to have green pseudohumans hanging around in broad daylight it might well be perfectly sensible to use the Gygaxian goblin concept. There is certain grandeur and majesty in the Greyhawk vision, really - I could see myself running it at some point, but I would go all in with it in that case, making it all about the ethnic cleansing and racial wars and so on. (If that sounds strange, you should read up on what Greyhawk is like. Topic for another day, no doubt.)

I should note that Mike is an originalist of sorts regarding D&D, from what we've discussed - he seems to derive some sort of pleasure from seemingly arbitrary aesthetic choices like "D&D is about dungeons" and "you gotta be after golden treasure for it to be D&D" - and apparently, "greenskins gotta be monsters or it all falls apart". Needless to say, I don't agree with him on any of these points.

(And because this is the Internet, I should note that I have no problem whatsoever with disagreeing with Mike. I'm adult enough to, you know, accept that not everybody wants the same exact things all the time that I do. Aesthetic judgements are allowed to differ, at least in polite society. I would feel Mike's D&D constraining and a bit less than it has potential to be, the way it limits itself artificially to a strict set of dungeoneering challenges, but that's no judgement on the man himself.)

\n Mike, what does monster mean? And what do goblins as you envision them do, day to day?

\n

Mike, what does monster mean?

\nMonsters are beings who appear in the Monster section of the rule book and they mainly do what their descriptions state they do. Mostly this is to lurk in caves, assault intruders and be associated with a random amount of gold.

Goblins are the arch-perpetrators of this behaviour (or at least are regulars on Wandering Monster tables universally) and have been enshrined in our culture as a subterranean-dwelling, diminutive race of mischievous, green humanoids that are motivated by violence and gold (which, interestingly, is the default motivation for everything in OS D&D...).

This is a longwinded way of saying that I, personally, don't envision Goblins. Gygax envisions Goblins, I read Gygax. The reading is important. I want to try examine what those dudes were thinking about in, like, an art history/anthropological sense. I'm a nerd, I like words. The OSR has this approach in regard to rules ("playing like it was really played!") but I'm interested in what the text implies about the setting ("seeing like it was really seen!"). Sure, this would be easier if I weren't just going off the B/X books (which are skimpy on the detail), but that restriction is part of the...fun? Challenge?

Hm, not sure I actually feel as strongly as the above might imply about all this. I'm just trying to avoid bringing my own setting intentions into my reading of the text. If Moldvay implies bitter and eternal race-war, I gotta face that.

\n I'd do like to introduce a personal definition, which may help a bit. I prefer to define as a monster any creature encountered that can't be reasoned with. Otherwise, if it has a culture, it has a language and then there's a chance to avoid a confrontation (and even obtain something else) if the PCs can communicate with it. For me it takes then the identity of a person, despite the social situation around them.

\n

\n One of the most powerful and fascinating things to me about D&D cultures are the political-aesthetic decisions like what goblins mean, and how they are interpreted differently. I use a different solution than either of you two (Eero & Potemkin), I think, on this particular problem, but it's really neat how it is a Question That Must Be Answered, in a way, when you engage with the game.

\n I swing the opposite direction from what you call the Finnish school, but unlike you I also reject Gygaxian Naturalism and the \u201cCaves of Chaos\u201d-style unproblematic depictions of the monstrous. But my solution is to exclusively use fairy-tale goblins. My goblins do not have society, they only have games and transparently monstrous imitation. My goblins are spontaneously generated from the earth to repel intruders in the fiction as well as in the mechanics (in wandering monster checks).

If I want a tribe of humans I use a tribe of humans (and I feel strongly that this tbh the most ethical choice here but I don't want to ruin the conversation, that's my politics, informed by my own relationship with indigenous people and the political theory that they have produced).

I am super-interested in the colonialist assumptions of D&D (in the wild landscape, the general store, etc) and to me the OSR, the act of peeling back this published material that has built up where D&D references mostly other derivatives of D&D, is a really powerful tool for examining some power structures in the culture that produced it. The spaces between our viewpoints are indicative of that, too\u2014I think all three of them engage that material quite directly.

PS: it is possible that either of you may feel that I am not describing or do not understand your positions properly, I don't want to pretend to be representing them fully in this comparison

PPS: I also allow my players a lot of authorship of the setting through character creation, so that we get a lot of creative problem-solving happening when they re-introduced received D&Disms, scottish dwarfs or tall wise elves rather than my Midsummer Nights' Dream/Medieval Green Men versions, but I like that a lot

PPPS: I keep thinking of things! I had a good discussion on Monday where some newish players kept asking me how the goblins ship worked given that I had described it as being full of holes and completely falling to bits but yet it was actually a little bit faster than a similarly-designed human ship. I started with "you know, goblins are like that" and continued with "there's a bathtub on the side of it, a bit of siding from a house" and a little more of "goblins are like that" and I think we got somewhere in the end. Goblin ships don't work, that's the whole idea! But they'll get you!

\n You may be somewhat relieved to know that the same blurry dilemma exists on the opposite end of the spectrum. In "Monsters! Monsters!" the GM awards extra XP for acts of wanton cruelty, and the lamest monster you can play is "Human Scum".

BTW, wanna talk about a bias... Monsters in MM get XP for taking human captives, but NO POINTS FOR UGLY PEOPLE!

\n In fact, here's a short table of my "humanoid monster solutions", I think you'll find this interesting (not as "rules" or such, merely as an example of what one might do). This is how our campaign ended up intepreting the critters, one at a time as they came up during actual play:
Goblins - human "hill-people", reclusive known hunter-gatherer peoples living in the wild spaces where civilization had not enroached yet. Sort of likes Lapps in Finnish history, or Finns for Scandinavians and Russians. Where they have subhuman HD (remember the sources often differ slightly), that's because of malnutrition and general hardship in life.
Hobgoblins - warrior elites of the goblin tribes. When encountered alone without goblins at hand, often a warrior cult consisting of the best from multiple goblin tribes, engaging in short or long term pilgrimage, training camp, guarding holy goblin site, etc.
Orcs - non-human, soulless demon-warriors made of non-earthly matter. No language, but swarm instinct and integral capabilities in the ways of war. There is a Control Orcs 2nd level M-U spell, of course, known to demonologists. When orcs are treated anything like a tribal civilization in an adventure module, I just swap them 1:1 with goblins and hobgoblins.
Ogres - a religio-social malady/curse affecting the "whitey" civilization (that's not me being cute about American racial slang so much as me being cute about translating an old Finnish racial epithet used to distinguish between the Christian, agricultural majority population and peoples such as gypsies and Lapps); on occasion people living reclusively away from regular church-going folks get these cannibalistic urges (several possible reasons, but essentially it's just the way of the world) that, when you give in, turn the person over time into a predatorial, hulking mass of hungry flesh. Some (perhaps depending on their human inclinations or whatever) turn into "ogre mages", cunning beings capable of disguising their ogre nature and walking among humans to prey on them. Ogres tend to be solitary, but on occasion they form communities controlled by an ogre mage, joined together by their inhuman appetites.
Bugbears - (this was the "furry giant goblinoid", I think) a sort of a goblin ethic/cultural counterpart of the ogre; the animist goblin tribes do not seem to suffer from ogricism, but they have a similar encepalopathy particularly associated with tribal shamanism that causes gigantism, excessive fur growth and irrational behaviour patterns to some few tribesmen. Bugbears are generally driven out of their tribes, and the phenomenon is considered a sad plight against which goblin mothers sacrifice to venerated spirits, although occasionally they are exploited by unscrupulous goblin shamans and such.
Ghouls - considering the intimate relationship of ogres and human cannibalism, one is forced to ask whether ghouls have something to do with it as well. Interestingly enough the answer seems to be negative, despite "ghoul" in my historical fantasy campaign having been sort of a disease-like affliction as well; they're just two separate phenomena that have something to do with cannibalism, it seems. The ghoul in our campaign was a sort of a biological/memetic disease (one of the absolutely weirdest adventures we had concerned a company of 400 foot soldiers being quarantined on an island near Venice while a rash of ghoulism raged among their ranks and the PC command cadre attempted to cleanse the company) that would not let go in far-progressed cases even in death, so that a ghoul colony would generally include about 50% "technically living" ghouls and 50% "proper undead" ghouls. I know, it's weird to have two unrelated cannibalism myths going here, but that's how it came out when the historical fantasy aesthetic was smashed together with a random series of adventure modules featuring both critters.
Kobolds - mythical earth fae, encountered in deep mines and such. This was a given, considering how the campaign tramped over German landscapes. Rare, magical creatures, essentially same as Finnish (or English) gnomes. Where an adventure would require otherwise (a rare situation - the OSR adventure stock I've mostly used has kobolds pretty rare, for some reason), I just put in particularly malnourished, almost comically wretched goblins instead.
Lizard-men - as an interesting exception to the tendency of getting rid of the humanoid monsters on aesthetic grounds, I actually actively preserved the lizardpeople, and even used them myself in original scenarios a little bit The idea was that lizardmen are an extremely reclusive, degenerate, exclusively underground species descended from the mythical, nefarious snakepeoples of antediluvian Earth. Pulp fantasy inspiration here, basically - by having them be an unknown horrible secret of the inner earth I'd avoid having them like steal sheep from local farmers. The shock factor is nice for players who are used to dealing with goblin tribes that you can sort of deal with - unlike my primitive tribesmen goblins, you can't live among the lizardmen and sing their songs, not without utmost degeneracy of your own humanity. Where lizard-men are used on the surface by an adventure, I substitute a degenerate human snake cult.

\n I think maybe my use of "gygaxian naturalism" is too AD&D for this conversation, yeah. I am talking about that fundamentalist interpretation of the text, which is very powerful for setting up a game and expectations.

But here is another go at describing the difference: I considered it very important to write some of my own materials, especially a little booklet for character creation, because I want that rock-solid reasoning that comes from saying "this is how goblins behave in the rulebook" that you use, mike, but with only some of the ideas there. Although I walk new players through character creation orally almost always, the text I give them still offers a lot of hints about this stuff if they ever actually bother reading it: that elves are probably changeling children in human places rather than what they have learned from video games, that if halflings reach their level limit and you don't retire them they are basically going to turn into monsters or faeries or leprechauns or something.

I don't play modules, very intentionally, although I'm interested in doing more to reference or interrogate them. But I do find it very interesting that Raggis game, which seems to follow a lot of that same motivation, falls back on that support, which as you say Eero, makes most sense as a way of interpreting past texts.

\n Eero, did you ever encounter a situation in some adventure that caused a notable dissonance or raised difficult to integrate issues? (I don't have anything in mind that would even qualify, but it seems like if there was something like that, it would be instructive.)

\n Actually I meant it more like this: he establishes the origin of Goblins in this one way because of this adventure and then this other thing gets tacked on because of this adventure. That's cool, we're all learning together how to make sense of this stuff. But then this third adventure comes along and it's tough to reconcile with the reality we constructed and established as canon so we have to do this, that and the other to make it work.

Goblin babies aren't a problem -- I advocate that they exist and the players and kill them or not.

\n

Eero, did you ever encounter a situation in some adventure that caused a notable dissonance or raised difficult to integrate issues? (I don't have anything in mind that would even qualify, but it seems like if there was something like that, it would be instructive.)

\nI wouldn't say that this would have come up as a problem. It is easy for the GM (seems easy to me, I mean) to spin things creatively, or make the necessary changes in an adventure to make it all make sense. Note that "make sense" is not here the dry prune legalism concept that players occasionally use to argue their cases - there is no need or requirement for things to go the way a player with no imagination expects them to be, and a mere player claim that things have to be the way he wants them to be or they "won't make sense" is not true without further substance. The fiction can take a surprising amount of variation and surprise before you even need to consider changing anything.

For example, it would be a small mind that would claim that all goblins all over the campaign world have to worship that same goblin god, wear the same goblin dresses and speak the same goblin language that the first tribe we encountered did. That has not been true of a single tribal culture in the real world, as far as we know. The word "goblin" is just a word, if it becomes important we can discard even the subtle suggestion that all of the goblin tribes that show up in play are ethnically related to each other - maybe slightly different parts of the campaign world have entirely different stocks of primitive forest people that have nothing to do with each other. Note that the term "goblin" may or may not be swung around in actual play - in our historical campaign any and all terminology is local and ethnographic anyway, the PCs don't have like a pokedex where they check out the official name of something they encounter. "Goblin" is usually a local whitey ethnic term/slur (little difference in a pre-liberal world), often mired in weird superstitions (so the local human NPCs really believe that goblins spoil milk and kidnap babies, it just so happens that these "goblins" are actually real people who live in the wilds).

Regarding practical themes, for us the colonialistic theme with D&D adventurers and goblins has worked quite naturally: the players are quick enough on their feet that even somebody who doesn't know about goblins being a "primitive hunter-gathered ethnicity of humans" generally speaking has their footing back after five minutes of actual play. (I don't think I've ever met anybody outside the Internet who would just plain choke on the idea that they have to deal with human NPCs in a dungeon crawl.) After that point it's just a matter of depicting encounters between civilizations with massive discrepancy in material culture and significant differences in spiritualism - not to speak of language issues and such. Many players go all Pocahontas on the situation, some play hardline conquistadors (that is, standard D&D adventurers - there is no practical difference), some basically empathetic yet practical opportunists who'll sell some wildmen down the river if there's real reward for them in it. It's all quite reasonable as a social roleplaying challenge, where sometimes the adventurers end up like trading with and learning from the local goblins, and sometimes they end up in bitter genocidal wars with them (gratifyingly often to their own detriment, although not always). Easy enough for even a single hardliner to blow up any peace conferences or such, after all, and the goblins generally aren't stupid enough to let you betray them twice.

\n I do agree that it's surprising from an external viewpoint that the credibility of the setting can withstand having a necromancer's lair near an ordinary European town. I would not have expected this to work myself, had I been presented with the aesthetic notion in advance of trying it out. However, it is apparently the case that normality can stand quite a bit of stress and still contribute entirely meaningfully to the game's setting and strategic landscape.

We do certainly pay attention to the things you mention, but it is apparently not the case that these concerns would become showstoppers. A healthy amount of constructive priority (meaning, we assume the facts on the ground and then deduce their reasons, instead of assuming our own baseless assumptions from some medieval movie and then deducing why the facts on the ground can't be true, like a destructive player thinks) helps, as does a varied knowledge base and a general maturity in understanding the natural and social sciences - it simply is not the case that we would get stuck in idiotic arguments about like whether katanas were known in Europe in the 16th century, if you're imagining the setting discovery process to be like that. The world is a complex place and everything has justifiable exceptions as long as you're willing to keep an open mind.

Some specific notes:

The "vast treasures" in D&D adventures are not actually so vast for the most part. A big part of that impression is that people often don't have a very good grasp on economy, and a part is that they're treating these treasures at a personal scale - so it's sort of a myth that D&D dungeon treasures are unrealistically insane in scope. (Many of those treasures are exceptional and unrealistic in social terms, yes - but that doesn't matter as long as your hoard is owned by like elves or something; who's to say that those don't just sit on top of big gold piles because they smell nice?) Ultimately, after a couple hundred sessions of "historical fantasy D&D", I have to say that PCs have never been even a blip on the radars of true merchant princes and other money men of the late medieval. An ordinary high nobleman (hochadel, I mean) brings in like 50 000 accounting units a year as profits from their estates (on top of political influence and such, and of course this is a number that varies massively case to case), while adventurers find "huge" treasure hoards in the thousands of units. Springs them from rural poor to urban middle class, sure, but getting further is behind some real serious work and luck. We've played ordinary published adventures (mostly OSR, mostly low-level), and we've never seen a dungeon that would have come even close to triggering a genuine gold rush or cause any such large scale economic disruption. Dungeon adventure operations are simply too small in scale and too quick in time-span to cause economic realignment, except in the personal finances of the adventurers.

(Remember that I have stripped the game of all artificial level-ups, and generally 90% of adventures seeded in the setting are "low level", so the campaign's power-level profile is different from what you might be used to; from my reading it seems that many, even most groups that play D&D use various cheats to get to "mid-levels" quickly, and then stay there for the rest of the campaign. The TSR level 4-8 monty haul adventures you're thinking of are very, very rare, and treated as epic exceptions instead of any kind of routine. Practically no hoard has more than 10 000 units of treasure in one place in this sort of low-level sandbox; we had exactly two exceptions in 100 sessions, I think, and one of those was clearly broken design while the other wasn't a "hoard", but rather the on-hand warchest of the Northern League of Italian merchant city-states condottieri army.)

As for magical monstrosities and such, remember that the medieval rural landscape is full of such superstitions anyway. When the player characters unearthed Jason Morningstar's viking tomb full of undead crewsmen, and then abandoned the place for a couple months, that became a wild folklore story for the local villages; the undead vikings renovated their burial boat, brought it to the river and sailed it out to seas unknown. Admittedly that specific example could have turned into a paradigm shift if the undead vikings had, I don't know, proved contagious or something. Didn't happen at that time, although later we did indeed get that massive paradigm shift when the PCs had that zombie incident in Italy. Most such events, though, may have local witnesses and then they just become wild stories.

\n

maybe there is a vast Agharta down there somewhere, a vast sinuous empire of degenerate lizard-people and all manner of Gygaxian lunacy viewed through the feverish nightmare eyeglasses of a human explorer of these alien reaches.

\nIt is not for the first time I wished I could speak Finnish. I want in!

It's gratifying to read your thoughts expanded: It's interesting to see how the your process of justification is similar to mine in method but takes a few different turns. I suppose it's all down to taste and a little prior inclination.
One considerable difference in my conception of the D&D world compared to yours is in regards to Wilderness encounters - I was working on the assumption that this table wasn't intended to model the real passage of everyday people over a wilderness, but is the sole reserve of the adventurous party breaking new ground and discovering things unseen by human eyes: the wilderness is a Hex dungeon in a sense. To phrase it differently, the common highway and ploughed fields don't cause travellers to roll vs. wilderness: such civilised places obviously don't house supernatural monsters with any frequency, otherwise they wouldn't be civilised.

I'd like to defend the merits of monsters as humanity's antagonists and the colonial mindset in D&D at some point, but I feel it's a tricky one and involving a bunch of motivations and potential pitfalls.

\n I'm dead-set on challenging the idea that my interests in monster antagonism is hedonistic or serving any purpose other that to make entertaining play. I'm really baffled by the idea that I'm engaging in murder porn of zero creative worth simply because I'm engaging with a game whose main interests revolve around battling in-human beings and taking their (?) property. Confusing Goblins with the figure of colonial Native strikes me as problematizing where the intent of the text is a much more innocent in this regard and is clear that the central conceit of the fantasy setting is that the white European native is no longer steward of the Earth and must face well-equipped and often hostile co-inhabitors of the landscape - Dwarves, Halflings, Elves, Goblins, Fairies, Ogres, etc. This is demonstrable in the "post-apocalyptic" or medieval-millenniumist mood: the D&D setting often assumes a once-great civilisation that has since fallen leaving only ruins and secrets (the historical reality being the High Days of Rome moving into the "Dark" Ages) that the PCs now explore. I see this as a historical period where the European human hubris has led to a new dark age and communities coming under threat by "barbarian" forces (monsters, magic - orcs and goblins typically) is a new and terrifying prospect. What I'm saying is that I'd circumvent the colonialist interpretation by not choosing to interpret the conflict between men and monsters as one of colonial contact and control by the white man but a model of equal rivials engaged in protracted feudal competition to a shared homeland. The idea of the Shire, Rivendell and Gondor as separate but equal communities drawn along "racial" lines (by species? The language is confusing here) that might be allies or enemies against one another is a good example of this. Obviously these conflicts aren't without consequence (any notion of having a continuous setting implies actions have consequences) but they simply aren't drawn up in a colonialist debate. In effect, the Goblins I meet in the dungeon aren't the native inhabitants who have a moral right to defend their home - they're combatants from an enemy nation participating with consent in a territorial dispute over this dungeon corridor. Of course even modern warfare is varied in tone and exchange, so the conversation could well be civilised and negotiations made if the monsters aren't in the mood for combat - but it's called diplomacy or parley for a reason. Usually I conduct my PCs in-line with the Geneva Convention (the good treatment of prisoners, avoiding cruel or inhuman weapons) and I feel some moral requirement has been met, like playing the Allies in a WW2 setting. Conflict and murder are essentially immoral but I feel I can stomach it if I'm playing at consenting soldier-mercenary (not conquistador) and the point of play is negotiating fictional conflicts. Genocide is a loaded word and I am loath to use it when talking about D&D.

I do, however, love the motivation behind play being "how do I grasp fortune in this cruel world?" Even in my war-game conception of early D&D that strikes me as a good way to direct the game to a potentially less problematic place. Good work! Though the real moral debate isn't one surrounding colonialism but one about mercenary activity and proto-capitalist/feudalist greed.

\n I don't really want to ascribe any motivations to you, Mike. I couldn't possibly tell, I'm just musing up there based on prior discussions about these sorts of topics. It's something of a trend for the D&D setup to be justified by it merely being a game, and by the fact that the players want to kill things for loots, so you got to provide.

Your specific take on avoiding the colonialist overtones is interesting as well. In many adventures it is somewhat possible to interpret it like the humanoid monsters are not defending their homes in the dungeon, that is true. I would still say that the majority situation is one where that interpretation is not really credible: goblins clearly don't have a complex civilization where they'd project force over great distances, and they often seem set up to stay, with hearths and families. Other humanoids (like hobgoblins, often represented as organized and civilized beings, sort of fantasy nazis) are more credible as organized polities competing for dungeon resources in a cold war situation, of course.

I guess that in a setting like that monstrous humanoids don't necessarily need to be dealt with as victims. If you don't have the "inherently evil" aspect, then it's not like Greyhawk, either. Given those two points (monstrous humanoids are non-victimized, and are not inherently evil), then you do indeed have sort of a Great Game situation, with brave PC officers of his majesty's navy facing down the dastardly frogs over natural resources under contention. Of course that Greyhawk question does persist: why have them be non-human if you're just going to deal with them like human ethnicities. I suppose there are subtle aesthetic reasons, similar to why Star Trek has so many forehead alien types when they could just have an "ancient human diaspora".

Regarding the intent of the D&D text itself, though, I think it's pretty clear that there is a stark dividing line between good races and evil ones in by the book D&D. You can live with elves and dwarves, and their mutual distrust is a great tragedy, while the best you can hope for with a goblin is a cease-fire while they plot how to stab you in the back. Surely this is not controversial, as regards the actual D&D mainstream.

\n I definitely do not recognize my game in your description of monsters-qua-monsters play, Eero.

D&D creates a model of the medieval in which problems are solved by combat. Insults are solved with to-the-death combat, because that is what they do in heroic romances and the sagas and the fiction that is based on those things. You make deals with people and if they don't work you fight them. Sometimes this is in a tunnel in the ground and sometimes it is a ritual duel above the ground.

This is not because of war, it is because that is how society works. You get to be a lord by getting enough treasure to be 9th level. It's a mistake to try to live in this fictional medieval by liberal ethics.

I don't think my players could be described as making war on goblins any more than they make war on men, although they have certainly fought many of each.

Yes of course post-greyhawk published worlds have a certain dynamic. But we are not beholden to Gygax's politics, which in my mind at least lines up pretty well with your description of a social-darwinist world, Eero. He was an American exceptionalist who ultimately demonstrated that he was actually a shitty businessman despite viewing collaborators as instrumental and discarding them to preserve his own power, and his play culture was also informed tremendously by American military culture.

Why not just throw out the bits you don't like directly?

---

To me, changing the nature of goblins doesn't solve Gygax's racism. What is described as "interesting" play involving colonial guilt etc. sounds overplayed to me, and perhaps just an attempt to feel smugly superior to the module authors without actually changing the problematic parts of their play-style. In the mean time, it also blocks the things that I am much more attracted to, and that I think D&D is well suited to: addressing the landscape as composed of beings which can be bargained with, tricked, or fought, but don't obey the rules of humanity because they are fundamentally different in nature.

I get so sad when, outside of this game talk, I read people speculating that folkloric beings are based on, say, extinct Neanderthal people or early European tribes or something like that, this incredible yet profoundly unimaginative stretch that ignores the easily observable way that we like to assign personality to the forces of the world around us, and refuses to consider that people have lived with different ethics than we have now. We have been using an animist landscape to structure our lives and actually solve problems for much longer than we've had post-tolkein, post WWII, orcs on our minds.

Part of what led me back to this game was reading a lot of theory and games criticism coming out of speculative realist philosophy / object-oriented ontology, that recognized games in general, but especially those coming out of D&D's tradition as being powerful in this way, and it connected pretty well with things I was thinking about real people's worldviews, especially some thinking about constructing Neopaganisms that I have a lot of exposure to. It's what I play the game for. Monsters cannot be human for me to address these ideas.

\n

But what about the necessity of providing enough adventure hooks for the game to remain interesting? How close together do you place your "adventures"? Do you try to space them out "believably", or do we just assume that the characters happen to be in a weird place in the world where, by some chance, there are two haunted castles and three underground tombs infested with monsters all within 25 miles of each other? Do you spend any effort rationalizing this kind of thing, and how it has come to be?

\nYou ask many of the same questions that I would have asked before trying to this out. As with some of the earlier aspects we've covered, this is also a thing that works surprisingly effortlessly in actual play. I'll try to explain why this seems to be the case, although in practice I just tried it out and found it less problematic than we would assume from an armchair perspective.

Obviously we're applying a healthy amount of PC exceptionalism in that they have the wonderful ability to stumble upon the most interesting things going on in each environment by the virtue of them being our actual playing pieces, and it wouldn't be much of a game if the PCs never found anything interesting. It's not an absolute and automatic guarantee of adventure, but practically the threshold for finding stuff is very low. No different from how Sherlock Holmes regularly gets interesting cases to work on, because otherwise there'd be nothing to tell.

In practice we find that the world is a big place, and it is almost impossible to include so much weirdness that you'd smother the ordinary setting in it. For example, consider the traditional sandbox campaign starter set: a local market town (like thousand denizens total), and three adventure locations in reasonable distance. Reasonable for 1st level characters is basically like under 2 days of travel to one direction. This means that you need to set your three starter adventures within a circle with a diameter of under say a 100 miles, if we assume that the local terrain is basically fit for travel. That's 8,000 square miles. For comparison's sake, that's half the area of the country of the Netherlands; it includes an arbitrary number of small villages, a dozen of such market towns, and multiple large cities, when speaking of a highly urbanized country like that. Alternatively, we can be in a more sparsely populated area, in which case there's more room for the unknown in those dark recesses of the woods where nobody ever goes.

Specifically, a student of folklore might tell you that typical folk legends, what might be termed "local supernatural stories", have a range of like 30 miles or so in most rural environments. Get any farther than that, and the tales might still basically be the same, but they'll be attached to different local landmarks, simply because the people don't just move that far in their ordinary lives. When we replace all this folk legendarium with the presumption that some of these stories are actually true, we get a sense for how much weirdness it is appropriate to have in an area. I would like to claim, based on experience, that credibility is hardly stretched if a colorful village that the players like, with a few recurring NPCs, also has say 1d6 weird local legends, of which about half are shared with other local villages, and of which about half are "true" in the sense that there is an adventure hook associated with them. So this calculation tells us that we can easily have at least one strange adventure per village - and pre-modern farming villages are spaced out with like 10-20 miles between them at most. And that's just the ordinary "white noise" of adventurers traipsing around the countryside, it doesn't take into account the fact that you want to have local curiousities that break the patterns. So in addition to that spooky story the locals tell about a headless horseman that robs people and hides their gold in a bog, that same area might well have adventures the local farmers know nothing about.

Alternatively, you can throw usual patterns to the winds and accept that in your campaign PCs actually travel more should I say pulp adventure distances in between adventures. Forget having three adventure locations within a 100 mile circle; rather, give the players a map of say the entire country of France, and make them Richelieu's secret witch hunters. At that point you'll have to literally throw hundreds and thousands of adventure hooks at them before the number starts to look screwy. Sure, they might have to travel a few weeks from place to place, as one week they're in Rouen looking after some werewolf rumours, and the next they're in Paris after the ghouls (which we all know live under the city). That's obviously just an arbitrary example of a historical adventure campaign pattern where it doesn't matter that adventures are hundreds of miles apart - just don't mess with unrealistic travel complications, and perhaps let the players abstract "strategic travel" to speed things up, and there's no reason why things can't be spaced out more than you'd usually see in a D&D sandbox.

In practice I found that I could have like 20 different adventures in a geographical area about the size of the Netherlands, and that didn't start feeling like the weirdness would have broken up the normalcy. Of course the players developed a healthy respect for the wild places, but as there was no clear pattern to the excursions from normalcy, it never became a reason for the PCs to outright discard their worldview or anything like that. It would definitely be different if all 20 of those adventures were about say an Andromedan invasion of the country, then that amount of aberration would definitely have to cause societal reactions. However, as the adventures were mostly about forgotten old ruins, crazy wizards, dangerous animals/monsters, degenerate cults, domestic terrorism... all those are already things that history has in plenty, the fact that the PCs actually believe in werewolves existing (because they're the people who actually go out and encounter them) makes no difference whatsoever to the average burgher.

Also, of course not all adventures are about supernatural weirdness. When the adventure is about some robbers having broken into a family tomb, that shouldn't go on any player's "let's bust the GM for unrealism" list - that's the sort of thing that you'd expect to happen in a non-fantastic world as well.

I can imagine the situation where you have too much weirdness all in one place. Being brazen will basically let that pass - remember, we're deducing things about the nature of the setting on the basis of established facts, rather than trying to find reasons for why the established facts can't be true. Also, you can always find actual connections between strange adventures, which will explain the weirdness peak in a local area - basically the Hellmouth explanation

In our campaign one such joint explanation phenomenon was the ancient civilization of Duvan'Ku: the local environs of fantasy-Holland included several adventures involving ancient ruins and crazy wizards. It was natural enough to find subtle connections between these - like, find out that the necromancer is a Duvan'Ku cultist relying on the same magical tools that you found earlier in that old ruin. This kind of strategic development doesn't only deepen the sandbox and make room for higher level adventures (such as one where the PCs travel back in time to confront the evil empire in its own time), but it also helps with the credence issue: five supernatural adventures near the same town, all in a world that is supposedly relatively normal, might look strange otherwise, but when we find out that all five are actually connected, it's no longer that strange - it's really just one anomaly at that point, and the rest of the superficially separate events are causally explained by the root cause.

\n Yes, a character who is hit and does not have hitpoint protection dies, barring ordinary or extraordinary processes otherwise. It's handled in the same exact manner whether the hitpoints are bypassed or exhausted: if we're doing death saves or whatever for characters at zero HP, then that's what you get when the HPs are bypassed, as well.

(A minor feature of this kind of thinking is that I much prefer having characters at zero HP to still be fighting-fit; in other words, the sudden deathstrike occurs when you can't pay in hitpoints, not when your hitpoint store is exhausted. This is a minuscule difference math-wise - although nearly significant at 1st level - but it just makes more sense to me. For example, it allows me to just say that non-leveled commoners have no hitpoints at all. Were I writing 4th edition with its ample 1 HP mook enemies, this would have been my semantic choice there as well.)

Situations where an attack bypasses hitpoints range from the traditional (poison being probably the most common) to the innovative. In our home game it is the case that a 5th degree success on an attack roll (20 points over opponent defense value) bypasses hitpoints, striking home as if the opponent's HP were exhausted. It's sort of a critical hit, really, ensuring that all combat carries risks that are unmanageable to a degree.

My general philosophy, though, is that hitpoints should provide generally effective tactical safety to characters - I do not desire to go so far with "bypass" effects as to cause hitpoints to seriously depreciate in value as the ultimate dramatic defense. In practice this means that if anything, I'm more prone to moving bypass effects into hitpoint-affecting effects than to invent new ways to bypass HP. For example, I'm quite fond of the 4th edition conceit that spells like say Hold Person only work on targets under a certain hitpoint limit, or they just cause HP damage that might or might not be enough to take you out of a fight. It is indisputable that the maths of the game work out better when certain types of attacks don't arbitrarily bypass hitpoints, but rather that you always have a good, intentional reason for when it happens. I haven't so far instituted these sorts of limitations on the various save or die spells, but that's mostly just because our play is so low-level that this hasn't been much of an issue.

(It would be very easy to copy the mechanism of the Power Word spells and institute a HP limit instead of or in addition to the saving throw in all spells and special attacks and so on that ordinarily bypass hitpoints. For example, Hold Person could say that it works if the opponent fails a save and they are currently at under 5*[caster level} HP. That'll still work on practically anything, but you might have to exhaust some targets a bit before they're properly softened up for magical bondage. Sounds preferable when the alternate option is to have a 10th level fighter be essentially powerless against a 1st level magic-user - and yes, I am aware of all the calculations, I know it comes down to initiative. Still.)

Aside from having critical hits bypass hitpoints (which I think is a good idea, combat should have some uncontrollable risk), two other conditions that have at least some arguments in favour are called shots and surprise attacks. As with the magical special attacks issue discussed above, it is always a good question to ask how far the plot protection provided by hitpoints carries you. Clearly it suffices almost always to help you get out of the way of a lethal sword-swing in a duel, but does your hitpoint "plot armour" make it so that you awaken at the last second to an assassin's knife in the deep of the night, and thus only take HP damage instead of dying, despite having been surprised in your sleep? Perhaps this is necessary, even if it means that a PC never gets to be the cool sniper who takes out the evil warlord from the rooftop with a crossbow. (Assuming the warlord isn't a non-leveled character, anyway.) Either way it goes, I think that it's fruitful to consider this in terms of desirability of plot protection in different situations, rather than as a question of physical robustness or whatever it is that the traditional D&D rabbit hole leads you to.

For what it's worth, my take has generally been that the hitpoint "protection" generally presumes being generally aware of your environment and capable of free movement, and thus I have generally allowed attacks to bypass hitpoints in extremely clear fictional conditions where this has not been the case. If I were really pressed on the matter as a matter of firm systematic ruling, I suspect that I'd end up like fractionalizing hitpoints or something - you lose half your hitpoints (or take double damage, maybe) if you can't move out of the way of a danger, stuff like that. Not elegant to my mind, especially as I already perform similar armor class calculations. Certainly a difficult question when you look at it from up close - in what conditions should hitpoints be ignored as a defense.

\n (Also, does this mean that non-lethal damage which bypasses hit points is handled purely in-fiction/by fiat? For instance, cutting off someone's finger or performing surgery on them.)

\n My feeling is that the specific Attributes are probably the first thing you could ditch when evaluating the rules and still be safely in D&D territory. In fact, I'm struggling to remember the last time I used attributes outside of determining roll adjustments in character generation in OSR play. "Save Vs..." is much more important to me as a DM and I'd probably have to eye to expand on those. "Save Vs Getting Lost" or something...

\n OED has this on the etymology. \n

Etymology: < Anglo-Norman and Middle French monstre, moustre, French monstre (mid 12th cent. in Old French as mostre in sense \u2018prodigy, marvel\u2019, first half of the 13th cent. in senses \u2018disfigured person\u2019 and \u2018misshapen being\u2019, c1223 in extended sense applied to a pagan, first half of the 18th cent. by antiphrasis denoting an extraordinarily attractive thing) < classical Latin m\u014dnstrum portent, prodigy, monstrous creature, wicked person, monstrous act, atrocity < the base of mon\u0113re to warn (see moneo n.; for the formation compare perhaps l\u016bstrum lustrum n.). Compare Italian mostro, \u2020monstro (1282), Spanish \u2020mostro (c1250; compare Spanish monstruo ( < a post-classical Latin variant of classical Latin m\u014dnstrum)), Portuguese monstro (1525 as m\xf5stro).

\nAnd the definition.\n

a. Originally: a mythical creature which is part animal and part human, or combines elements of two or more animal forms, and is frequently of great size and ferocious appearance. Later, more generally: any imaginary creature that is large, ugly, and frightening.

\n Eero,

My own thinking about D&D and attributes is along the same lines; I think it's worth embracing them full-scale (rather than entities which may or may not modify other important rules) or discarding them as important agents in gameplay.

Oddly enough, the OD&D text (I was just reading about it yesterday) matches your #3 almost exactly.

\n Ah, you're taken (3) have you, Paul? I'll take (2) then!

\n

2) Remove the attributes entirely, and replace them with personal qualities. Two 1st level Fighters would be mechanically identical by definition, with the only exception being if one or the other would happen to have some personal qualities that would distinguish them. Feat-like things, such as "Waste-born: +2 to survival checks". I've been considering running something like this for a few years, could be interesting; I would likely have the players roll up personal qualities for their characters in a sort of Traveller-esque life tree chargen process.

\nI was weaned on WFRP and have been in love with its engaging character generation from the get go. Having gotten to know D&D a little more intimately it strikes me that 1st Level characters (and 1st Level play) would benefit with the understanding that these characters aren't much separated from normal folk. You just simply aren't that heroic at 1st Level (even if you are called Magic User!) and maybe more prosaic concerns like occupation and immediate possessions should be more of a concern? Would you consider writing up your own tables for this, or would you use WFRP's or DCC's?

If not (2) then (3). I reeeeally like the sound of three.

\n

What does Healing mean in this context?

\nDepends on the healing. We generally tend to speak of "healing" spells, but it's understood to be strictly a technical term, and what actually occurs when hitpoints are recovered is ordinary post-combat recovery: you get your stamina back, you deal with the psychological issues, you get your courage back, the audience gets used to you having survived, whatever. This is in a context where the majority of hitpoint recovery happens through a "short rest" that takes a Turn and gets you most of your hitpoints back, most of the time.

This is separate from actual fictional healing, which can be natural, medical or magical in nature. That type generally speaking doesn't have direct hitpoint meaning, but you'd generally get much of your hitpoints back as a side effect when hit by a magic that restores your broken bones or whatever.\n

Also, I get what it feels like to have HP whittled down in a single fight causing impending tension - I haven't been stabbed yet but it's clear that this enemy is closing in for a killing blow. But what about when you lose a few HP in one battle, a few in another, and you're on one or zero hit points, but it's been ages since you were under threat, and now a goblin turns up? Mechanically we know that death is on the table, but fictionally, how do we make that tally? Or is this a case of dramatic irony at work, where we know that the character, somehow is marked for death, but they might not?

\nI personally deal with it by the fact that your hitpoint total sort of aligns with how tired you are; you can always get much of your hitpoints back by a short rest if you just have a couple of minutes to catch your breath. This slowly stops working through the day (you get less and less back with each short rest), but generally speaking we rarely face a situation where a character is extremely low in hitpoints unless it is also a situation where the character is exhausted, either because they just came out of a fight (with no chance to rest in between), or because they've been fighting (and taking short rests) for the entire day, and therefore simply can't get up to their normal hitpoints anymore today.

All this means that for our particular mechanization your scenario is unproblematic: it makes perfect sense that a dead-tired character forced into a swordfight will soon be dead as well as tired.

Other specific mechanizations have their own problems with hitpoints, but I find that for me personally aligning hitpoints fictionally with concepts like tiredness and stamina works quite well. Of course you'll make that lethal mistake when you're at your most tired. And of course you can recover most of your strength between combats if you'll only get to catch your breath. I would hazard that most people would find this concept of "hitpoints are stamina" to be a blindingly natural thing in comparison to the standard, if they tried it out a bit. It is always a small mystery as to what the traditional hitpoint is even supposed to be measuring, considering that it doesn't impact your combat effectiveness until you run out, but it also apparently only comes back after days and days of complete rest. I know that the traditional explanation is "bruises and scratches", but those of course don't accumulate into a killing blow the way hitpoint loss does - not without the fatigue element. My closest guess is PTSD, really - I could see myself modeling that with mechanics sort of close to how the traditional hitpoint works, in that you pile on stress until you become non-functional, and it can only be managed by extended and regular breaks away from combat

(Ultimately hitpoints are of course an abstract pacing mechanic. I'm just engaging into fictional explanations because the question was how we end up explaining these things in play. The important procedural point for me is that this fabulation is something we do because we feel like it in play - there's no dogmatic reason to have a single truth available about hitpoints. Some mechanizations just make explaining things easier and more natural, while with others you just have to ignore how it works for the most part.)

Ultimately dramatic irony is, of course, not a problem. It is inherently present if you play D&D combat mechanics "realistically", so that the characters themselves don't know that they have hitpoints. Two men go over the trench wall, but we the players know that only one of them is in danger of dying of the 1d6 damage immediately inflicted by enemy machine gun fire; one is an ordinary soldier, while the other is a 3rd level fighter, you see. This is why D&D is a heroic game at higher levels, once you drag yourself up to that level: after having experienced the deadliness of it in your guts, you get to enjoy having plot armor. Our local group up north used to call this psychological experience "coasting" - it is quite relaxing to be the fighter with like 15 hitpoints in a world where everybody else has about 5; you can get into the middle of melee and even come back when hit, all without being in serious danger of dying by accident.\n

- similarly, how about traps? Would you tend to use a saving throw? Or do projectiles always miss you unless they kill you?

\nDepends on the nature of the trap. As I discussed above, I have a theoretical leaning towards bringing more things into hitpoints, but in practice I follow the module text when running modules. After having done a few weeks of gameplay in whatever mechanical context I'll also use those conceits when GMing myself.

Having a fall into a pit cause hitpoint damage does not seem any more problematic to me whether I interpret hitpoints as drama protection, or as physical well-being. In both cases I have to basically just check whether hitpoints ran out, and if they didn't, then apparently that fall wasn't so bad after all. Of course the fall marked this guy for death later, sort of - now he'll fall to the next swordblow, where before that fall he would've survived one. Here the drama shield explanation actually fares better than the physical welfare explanation: there's no earthly reason why a fall that at most scratched a knee would make you markedly more likely to die in the following swordfight, while the dramatic conceit that you deserve to die now for dodging death earlier makes just as much sense as the whole concept of dramatic protection does in the first place.

Incidentally, the theory of dramatic protection fits well this idea that regularly comes up, where players know their HD, but not their HP. If it wasn't a pain in the ass to apply, I'd probably use it myself. Quite sensible for the players to have some vague sense of how much their character can get away with, but no exact knowledge. Of course the randomized damage already gets us about half of the effect, without having to centralize and blind the book-keeping.

\n With that kind of approach, Eero, do more minor wounds get much of a chance to be involved in the fictional positioning? I can see that serious wounds that would leave you out of the action are modelled well by your critical hits system.

But what about more minor ones? They seem like a flavourful and interesting challenge element - wounds to the foot making you limp, partially blinded by blood running past your eye, sprained wrist meaning you have to fight with your off-hand. These are in contrast to the HP, "You're fine until you're out of the action" setup. Are these just not an area of focus in the games you've played in so far, and so you haven't encumbered yourself with additional rules and book-keeping to deal with them? Do you have any thoughts about how you might incorporate them and do you think it would significantly alter D&D to do so?

\n The nuance of what happened if you passed a save vs critical hit roll was what I was missing from my picture of your system. So even if you pass there may still be minor injuries - nice! That's a good way of avoiding unnecessary complexity. The stunting is also interesting. Thanks for the answer.

\n Because it's a logistical nightmare over IRC. Constraints of the medium and all that.

\n Cool; great answers!

\n

Yep. Characters are a resource (an exceptionally valuable one) and the impact of essentially favouring the players in this way must be balanced against the scenario at hand. Dungeon Crawls are simply less fun if you're swarming down the corridors with 400 dudes - I might as well roll for treasure and magic items found and a % of casualties and we can get back to the Domain Game we're now playing.

\nThis is pretty much the routine I use. Entirely by the book as far as I'm concerned. The GM has the responsibility to call any combat that's already been practically resolved - no need to roll dice in the usual grind.

The procedure I use is that the GM offers a "deal" to the players, and once they accept, we can end the combat. The GM of course tries the get the players to accept some attrition in exchange for winning the fight, while the players might ask for easier terms if they feel that the fight favours their side. If no agreement is reached, the combat continues until it resolves in the ordinary way.

\n Yes, it's a regular part of my procedures. However, as the GM I only accept deals when I am not interested myself in rolling out the combat. The players will offer to deal when they want a combat to end, which is almost always because it's slow and boring and a done deal.

Generally the likeliest combats that are like this with us have involved unintelligent opposition engaged with extreme advantages, such as mantlet shields + chain mail + clubs against ordinary D&D skeletons in a narrow hallway - that's the sort of match-up that the humans will take 99 times of a hundred, so no real reason to waste time rolling dozens and dozens of dice for it.

The other situation is when the stakes are very low and the odds very high in favour of the PCs. For example, a part of 20 mercenaries ambushing three goblins. I might offer a 1/3 that one of the mercenaries takes a hit. If the players care, they might even refuse that an micromanage to attempt to avoid even that little bit of attrition.

Combats against intelligent opposition rarely end with a deal because of how important a factor morale is - the opponent might break any minute, so it doesn't hurt to roll another round of combat to see. I could well say that the native D&D solution to stretching combat is morale, and it is a good one; if I changed all morale-free opponents into intelligent ones that'll escape when they've lost, there would basically never be a need for cutting combat short with a deal.

\n

there would basically never be a need for cutting combat short with a deal.

\n...except for real life issues, of course, right? Running out of time, player boredom, a desire to focus on another aspect of play, and so forth.

Not to dissimilar how I've seen you handle, say, social negotiation:

"Ok, if we just want to skip the talking and get to the adventure, how about we make a Charisma roll. On a success, you learn everything the merchant knows; on a failure, you learn nothing and you're on your own. Deal?"

\n That's a very cool idea. Does that exist in any published RPGs?

\n I think the main problem would be making it feel consistent with the fiction: making those fights into a straight-up mechanical roll-off could be disappointing in other ways, and discounts smart strategy. I could see handling this kind of thing a little bit like Apocalypse World, however: you roll some dice and see whether you drive off the enemy (decent success), slaughter or capture them (great success), take damage (failure), or have a difficult tactical choice to make (partial result).

On a failure, the enemy deals its damage to the group, so failing against a large group of aggressive enemies might be lethal. Straight-up success should be rare, unless the group has the situation under control and has set things up in their favour (e.g. an ambush).

The tactical decisions, though, would be the meat of this system. You might have to choose full-unit tactics like a fighting retreat versus staying in the fight and suffering losses, losing ground (or hirelings bolting for the exit), surrendering or heavy losses. Or maybe the GM would be picking from some unfortunate options for the party, perhaps depending on who had initiative - the PCs or the monsters.

The fun part would be, as you suggest, in individual actions. Heroic characters could attempt desperate feats in order to change the outcome of the fight. The stakes would be high: on a success, the desperate maneuver could upgrade the result of combat one category better. On a failure, that character would take heavy damage (or risk capture or whatever) and possibly land the others in deeper waters, too.

This sounds like it could be fun. Imagine rolling well and routing a group of goblins, sending them fleeing down the corridors of the dungeon. However, we know that if they get away, they might alert the demons below, spoiling our plan. One of the heroes (perhaps a Thief) was lurking further down the tunnels, so he announces that he will attempt a desperate feat to improve this result. He leaps out into the path of the fleeing goblins, yelling and brandishing his sword. If he fails, he's overrun and probably run through by a goblin spear. But if he succeeds, he might be able to hold back the goblins or delay them long enough to upgrade the decent success into a great success: the party catches up to the goblins, surrounds them and now has the option of slaughtering or taking them captive.

Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?

\n Oh Mike, your loyal disciples are pining for you tonight. You have awakened a thirst for adventure in them...

\n Ran the first session of my face-to-face OSR game last night. I decided to go with Eero's rule on hitpoints - in that there are no max hp, you just reroll your hit dice every time you rest and that becomes your new current hp.

An interesting side-effect of this that I hadn't really thought through beforehand was that, as a simplifying procedure, I didn't ask players to roll these hitpoints until there was a situation that needed them. For example, when hexcrawling they travelled for two and a half days, with rests at night, but only encountered a monster on the second night. At that point I asked them to roll both hp and initiative. (People who had just woken up rolled 2d6 HD and took the lowest as their hp - not sure if I'll keep with that. A penalty to initiative for being sleepy makes more sense to me).

So when they rest we don't actually reroll hp - we just rub out the previous value. When they began exploring the Tower of the Stargazer no one had a hitpoint score. It was only when Able the questing nobleman's son fell down some stairs and took d6 damage that he also rolled d6 to find out how many hitpoints he had (only 2, alas).

I thought this was interesting in relation to the conversation about hidden hp earlier in this thread. It was generally agreed above that it was a pain procedurally. But with this approach, I'm perfectly happy for them to know their hp between when they first take damage and when they next rest. But between resting and the first time hp comes up it's simple to keep it unknown. Very neat.

This has the effect of making it so that players can't put the person who has low hp to the back as it's really not clear who they are. Whether this is a good thing or not... I quite like it, but it does give the players even less knowledge with which to make good tactical decisions.

\n Like I said, it didn't really happen on purpose - just a side effect of lazily evaluating things where possible. I'm keen to hear opinions on it as to whether it should continue like this. I think the other approach would be evaluate at the last minute by default, but allow the players to call for their roll sooner if they like. That way it puts the burden of deciding whether this is a situation where we care about tracking hp on the players, who are most motivated to have that info.

\n I'm tempted to make being able to roll your hp in advance a Perk for one of my classes. Possibly the adventurer/thief/specialist class.

\n Why even bother with HP at all?

-Everything does 1d6 damage.
-Level 1 Magic Users die (or Save Vs Death/Roll on Wounds table) on damage of 4 or greater, thieves/clerics on 5+ and fighters on 6+.
-Wearing armour gives you an Armour Save before death rolls (geez, this is getting Warhammer pretty fast).
-Higher levels increases the Damage Save score above 6 at some point. Powerful attacks deal 2d6 damage.

There you go. I think I could probably run a dungeon crawl with those rules. Beermat Character Sheets for playing at pubs.

\n HP-as-resource is such a temperamental and awkward subject as it deals with the conscientious issues immediately surrounding whether someone at the table can play right now or not. There's plenty of resource management systems to keep you occupied if you like them, why not HP become more like Encumbrance, something only noted when you trigger it - like trying to lift a heavy chest, or getting stabbed in this case.

\n Right! I wasn't saying that's the only game I like -- your suggestion for HP, Mike, seems interesting to me. But you asked "why bother..." and I was giving you an answer that I've seen at my table. Some people really value those things.

\n This is interesting to me:

Why do people feel that rolling HP at the moment of injury is more dangerous/risky than rolling in advance?

The only difference I can see is that, under the normal rules, low-HP characters have a chance to know in advance that they are "weak", and therefore try to avoid danger. High-HP characters can know in advance that they're more likely to survive certain dangers, and can do so consistently from adventure to adventure. But, aside from that, your odds of dying (or whatever outcome) are no different from ordinary play.

It may seem like it's more random, but it's not, really: it's just that the two rolls (HP and damage) are happening at two different moments in time rather than simultaneously.

I, personally, have an issue (from a design perspective) with the way HP are determined in low-level D&D; it's just too wide a range of results for the kind of gameplay we want. It makes no sense to me that a 1st-level character might have 700% more hit points than his peer, despite all else being equal. It's also uninteresting (to me, at least) to play a game where we know for a fact that Mike's PC is guaranteed to survive the first blow, no matter what (true under many versions of D&D rules), while Eero's, with only 1 hit point, is *guaranteed* to die from any blow or injury received.

My personal variation on this has two possible states for characters:

1. The character is unharmed, fully healed. No HP total, just hit dice.
2. The character is wounded; a hit point total is recorded to reflect their current state, and erased when they heal.

However, I think this works best when the range for HP is not so "swingy" or so large (as is the case for higher-level characters, for example).

\n

Why even bother with HP at all?

-Everything does 1d6 damage.
-Level 1 Magic Users die (or Save Vs Death/Roll on Wounds table) on damage of 4 or greater, thieves/clerics on 5+ and fighters on 6+.
-Wearing armour gives you an Armour Save before death rolls (geez, this is getting Warhammer pretty fast).
-Higher levels increases the Damage Save score above 6 at some point. Powerful attacks deal 2d6 damage.

There you go. I think I could probably run a dungeon crawl with those rules. Beermat Character Sheets for playing at pubs.

\nI've always been fond of this kind of rule for D&D-esque game design. However, you have a bit of problem when a series of lucky rolls can have your 1st-level Fighter surviving 12 blows from a frightening monster, with no reduction in future chances of death. I mean, it's not necessarily a *problem*, but it might feel a bit funny that this same dude can go take *another* arrow in the chest with only a 1-in-6 chance of snuffing it.

I would do it like this, personally (and in D&D-esque games, I tend to adopt a rule like this for monsters instead of tracking hit points in any case):

* Everything does 1d6 damage. (Or maybe really scary things are d6+1, d6+2... EDIT: roll extra dice and keep the best! That's a better match here.)

When you get hit, check the amount of damage against your personal scores:

* You die if the damage total is...
- Magic-User: 3+level (i.e. 4+ for 1st-level)
- Thief/Cleric: 4+level (i.e. 5+ for 1st-level)
- Fighter: 5+level (i.e. 6+ for 1st-level)

* You are wounded if the damage total is...
- Unarmoured: 1+
- Wearing armour: 2+
- Wearing really heavy armour: 3+


When you are wounded, decrease your "if you die" number by 1 until you have a chance to heal your wounds.

This models current levels of deadliness in standard D&D pretty well, actually. A third-level Thief with 3d6 hit points can take two to four hits before going down. Under this system, he has a "dead" number of 7+, so the first hit is just an injury, the second kills him on a 6, and the third on a 5-6, and the fourth on a 4-6. (Cumulatively, 17% chance of dying on the second blow, 44% chance of dying with the third blow, and 72% chance of dying with the fourth blow. With D&D hit points, assuming the Thief has 10.5 hit points, that would be a 0% chance of death on the first blow, a 17% chance on the second, 62% on the third.)

If you want to work Consitution and stuff like that into this, have it come into play in the "healing" part of the rules. Maybe you normally only heal overnight under safe conditions, but a Constitution check can "heal" one level of damage even in a short rest or under inhospitable circumstances. Then you can still have "hardy" characters, who seem to bounce back easily from an injury, versus "sickly" ones, who need extended bed-rest to do the same.

\n Oh, sure. The superhero/glass-jaw divide is indisputably wonky - if we change the existing level-HD-HP architecture in a way that bell curves the chances of survival, that puts a different spin on things.

But if we don't, extended blind HD rolls haven't helped balance the experience; they've just made it possible for any character to spontaneously become a glass-jaw, a condition that's generally terminal at low levels. It'd just make Mike and Eero both roll up new characters more often, instead of only Eero. (I guess that's balance? But it feels like chaos.)

\n What is the reason so many OSR-people have for keeping damage to always/nearly always 1d6? Coming from 3rd Ed as I am, it's requiring some adjustment in my thinking. I get that there is certain verisimilitude to it, in that a dagger can kill someone just as dead as big two-handed sword. Is it just for simplicity?

The conundrum I have in particular is that one of my players has kitted himself out with a heavy crossbow - we were going off the LotFP equipment lists as a starting point. Now as far as I can tell in LotFP (and I was reading fast to make rulings mid-session so I may have misunderstood) there is no mechanical difference between light and heavy crossbows other than range penalties. Heavy crossbows can fire further more accurately.

So far he hasn't fired it and hit anything, so damage hasn't come up. But it feels to me like, at least at short range, the heavy crossbow should do at least a little more than a light crossbow - maybe 1d6+1 - because it's launching bigger, heavier, thicker bolts with more force.

So there seem to be verisimilitude reasons for varying the damage, and also game/challenge ones: A mechanically differentiated set of weaponry gives interesting choices. I'm sure my player thought that when he chose the heavy crossbow he thought he was making a trade-off between having a light weapon that wouldn't slow him down and a powerful slow thing.

\n As for why it's 1d6 per HD and 1d6 per attack, that's to a great degree an accident of history. Six-sided dice are easy to procure, common even before rpgs, generally the dominant dice type in war games... A d5 would work as well from the viewpoint of pure game mechanics, for example. Or d10. Of course one might wish to fine-tune some secondary game mechanics if this was messed with. And nowadays the d6 is obviously a matter of tradition, all the various strata of D&D mechanical thinking are calibrated to that d6. The big scary weapon causing d10 damage, the stalwart dwarf with his d12 hit dice, the wimpy wizard with his d4 - they're all calculated off that d6 baseline.

I hope that helps explain how one might arrive at static damage dice constructively; it's not a matter of reducing 3rd edition D&D into simplification, but rather a matter of starting from scratch with the concept of "successful attack" and arriving at the idea of hit points and variable damage from there.

Considering my own specific simulation model, where hit points are not assigned a primary biomechanical interpretation in the fiction, I'll note that I do feature variable damage. It's just that the variation is not tied to specific weapons, which I find an unrealistic and ill-matching conceit for the rules-system for the reasons skimmed over above. Instead, examples of reasons that might cause damage different from the d6 baseline on an attack:
- The attack is made with generally ineffective, sub-lethal means. Unarmed attacks or being unfamiliar with a weapon and thus misusing it are examples of situations where this comes up. For example, I generally have characters cause 1d3 damage or so on unarmed attacks. This is not because a fist is lighter or less sharp than a sword, or any such crass basic physics reason; rather, its' an acknowledgement that a vast martial difference exists between these types of fighting, sufficient to be represented at the level of abstraction the game operates at. There's just no practicable one-hit kill available to a fist-fighter not trained in specific lethal techniques, which is different from the far more lethal weapon-wielding man.
- The fighter is trained in a specific style of fighting that, among other possible effects, bestows a bigger damage die. This is a very "rule of cool" thing in that at the level of abstraction D&D operates almost any such special fighting school goes into the realm of martial arts fiction rather than martial arts fact; think of it as "ninjas are more lethal" logic more than as an attempt to simulate reality. This is sort of my answer to the weapon-based variable damage dice: instead of weapons, why not privilege specific fighting styles in particular situations they are intended for? Seems like a more interesting and flavourful thing to do.
- A particularly successful attack causes extra damage. As we've discussed, I do degrees of success, and in combat those degrees can be used for "stunting". One of the basic stunts is to cause a bit of extra damage. I've traditionally had two degrees (attack result 10 points over AC) equal +1d6 damage for most modes of combat, but a simple +1 damage per degree of success might be more appropriate.

Note also that having static damage dice does not mean that weapons are necessarily identical with each other. There are other ways that weapons can differ from each other, and frequently do to drastic effect. Under this "successful attack" model the issue of effectiveness between a dagger vs. a sword against a man armed with a bill-hook and leather armor is much better addressed by modifiers to the attack roll and AC than by varying the damage roll; a successful attack with the dagger might have the same consequences as that made with a sword, but nothing says that it has to be as easy to accomplish that successful attack with the both of those!

Finally, I should say that my approach to this thing probably only makes sense if you're not hot for weapon fetishes. That is to say, if you think that the traditional D&D structuration that emphasizes weapons as fashion statements is cool, then all of the things I do probably mostly don't make sense. The variable weapon damage thing, and generally hooking game mechanics to specific weapons, makes sense if you think that weapon choice is a "character build" issue: dwarves should use axes, my ranger is cool because he fights with a sabre, this paladin has a special hammer fighting technique, this fighter has a +1 to attack with this specific sword here, and everybody chooses their weapons from a list of 30-40 options. If these types of weapon-focused conceits work for you aesthetically, then variable damage profiles for weapons go well with that, and support it. In fact, my understanding of the matter is that variable weapon damage profiles have been one of the big cornerstones that have contributed to establishing this aesthetic in the D&D fantasy world - and by extension, the world of modern gaming fantasy in general.

For clarity, the reverse of that observation is that for me the emphasis on individual signature weapons in gaming fantasy doesn't do anything - it feels dumb and unrealistic, and it comes in the way of exploring real martial issues. (That's always a big issue for me with the fantasy conventions - I have infinite patience for varieties of dragon-people, but when the fantasy comes in the way of exploring things that are actually real, such as historical swordplay, it becomes a problem for me in D&D.) Thus it's not surprising that I like to shape the rules system in a direction that encourages pondering the "real" reasons for different arms to exist, and the real implications of that martial landscape. Instead of thinking "my character uses a hammer to make him distinctive" the thinking is rather "a sword is a widely available, flexible weapon that my character is culturally familiar with, and that he trains with the most, so that's what he uses, just like everybody else".

I guess it would be fair to say that I find the entire conceit of a weapons list from which you choose your weapons to be moronic, and the "all weapons are mechanically identical" thing is something of a compromise solution in lieu of "use a fucking sword, that and the spear are the only things that might be reasonably expected to be available in this podunk town". The question of why there are different weapons is a somewhat different one from why there is or isn't variable weapon damage, though, so perhaps we'll leave that for another time

\n The whole "variable damage" (different weapons dealing different amounts of "damage") is quite involved and complex. Eero touches on it nicely: in a game where armor class and "hit points" obviously don't have anything to do with physical damage (else why would an elderly thief have more hit points than a young Orc warrior?), and a single "attack" represents a full minute of combat, it's very bizarre to expect a shortsword to be meaningfully different from a broadsword in terms of "damage". After all, we don't even know how many times you hit your enemy, and whether they dodged, parried, or suffered a number of smaller blows.

However, there are a lot of things involved. Historically, D&D originally used d6 for everything, including hit points and weapons. This makes sense: any attack can kill any target, if it hits right. A dagger through the throat is no different from a sword through the throat after all, and the whole concept of "hit points" makes it pretty clear that only the fatal strike is "real".

You could also say that a large, heavy weapon hurts the target more when it hits, but a small, nimble weapon might be less likely to kill but also might allow its user to attack more often or land more (small) blows - over a long combat round, whether a minute or 10 seconds, this evens out.

In some versions of old-school D&D, you had consistent d6 damage for weapons, but then also a chart of "weapons vs. armor" which gave certain weapons bonuses or penalties against certain types of armour. This has a certain logic to it: your dagger is just as likely to kill someone, but if you're fighting someone in plate mail, you're going to have to roll a lot better with your dagger than if you were using a polearm. Although clunky mechanically, from a logical perspective this approach to modeling combat is very coherent; it makes a lot of sense.

When they brought in other types of dice, they started changing hit dice for various classes and monsters, so it was natural for weapons to follow. Introducing different die sizes makes weapon choice meaningful and gives a boost to fighters (who are more likely to use the weapons with the high damage dice). I've seen rules where only fighters with high Strength scores receive a bonus damage when using two-handed weapons, for example.

This led to an increase in average damage dealt across the board, which led to monster hit dice being upgraded to d8s, and so on.

Some other complaints D&D players had before variable damage had nothing to do with "realism" and everything to do with real-life decisions. For instance, if every weapon has the same chance of killing a monster, why would you buy an expensive sword when you can just get a bunch of iron spikes or a sharp stick? Variable damage brings these tendencies back into reasonable territory.

Other ways to approach this I've seen in the OSR include:

1. Variable damage by class. Like in Dungeon World, wizards do d4 damage, thieves d6, etc. This kind of thing makes sense and allows your wizard to pick up a sword to defend himself without throwing "game balance" out the window.

2. Considering weapon choice a tactical trifecta: do you maximize defense, offense, or damage? I've seen different ways of handling this, but the goal is to make the three options mechanically balanced, so that one option isn't always better than the others. An example implementation might be:

* Weapon and shield: +1 AC (from the shield)
* Two-handed weapon: damage bonus (+1 to damage, or roll two dice and keep the best)
* Two weapons: +1 to hit

Here's a link to a sample discussion of variable damage (you can see a variety of opinions in the comments): OD&D Weapon Damage

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What is the reason so many OSR-people have for keeping damage to always/nearly always 1d6? Coming from 3rd Ed as I am, it's requiring some adjustment in my thinking. I get that there is certain verisimilitude to it, in that a dagger can kill someone just as dead as big two-handed sword. Is it just for simplicity?

The conundrum I have in particular is that one of my players has kitted himself out with a heavy crossbow - we were going off the LotFP equipment lists as a starting point. Now as far as I can tell in LotFP (and I was reading fast to make rulings mid-session so I may have misunderstood) there is no mechanical difference between light and heavy crossbows other than range penalties. Heavy crossbows can fire further more accurately.

\nStop right there! The elegant solution to this problem has already been uncovered in your own post - all weapons do 1d6 damage but this heavy crossbow seems like it would do more, right? So you tell your player "Ok, this crossbow does +1 damage," he marks it on his sheet and play continues. The player just does the maths and reports a higher damage rate when it occurs in combat. If the table wants to extend "+1" to all heavy crossbows, sure! I don't see the need to then immediately jump to the conclusion that you then need to consider calculating all modifiers for all weapons in all situations (or whathaveyou) for the purpose of just in case.

Eero's history of the d6 seems on the money to me!

It's really a pro in terms of simplicity too: All monsters have d6 damage and HD are all d8s. Some larger monsters have multiple HD and multiple attacks/round (i.e. 2 or 3d6 damage). This is great for me as a DM managing different creatures.
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I've always been fond of this kind of rule for D&D-esque game design. However, you have a bit of problem when a series of lucky rolls can have your 1st-level Fighter surviving 12 blows from a frightening monster, with no reduction in future chances of death. I mean, it's not necessarily a *problem*, but it might feel a bit funny that this same dude can go take *another* arrow in the chest with only a 1-in-6 chance of snuffing it.

\nI think the superhero thing has been a little overstated here. These are still pretty glass-jawed characters: the Fighter is dead on a roll of a six (this is a single attack roll, not Roll-to-Hit followed by Roll-to-Damage). The character has snuffed it. There's a level of war-game abstraction going on in the combat here - we're not counting individual arrows shot into the Fighter (if the table cares for colour, perhaps a near-miss means some superficial injury is noted), only what his chances are in this particular pressing attack by the opposition. 1-in-6.
If you consider I'm using Wandering Monster tables that can generate 18 homicidal Halflings all about to charge the Fighter on the front line then this idea that just because he can withstand 12 blows with a slim chance of never getting a 6, that doesn't mean I can start being superheoric as a player. It would still be dumb to pick fights. And it would be dumb not to position your fighters on the front line the above method means the fighter always knows he's tougher than the other classes - the idea of the 1HP fighter annoys me slightly, if only for the contradictory feelings it gives me as a player where I both want to play conservatively and also get into fights. Fighters - professional fighters - are tough and their stats should prove it. The "Commoner" class (with a random medieval career) should be officially risen into the ranks of OSR classes (MU, Cleric, Elf, etc) and the Fighter should require a STR score of 14 or more as a specialist class.

Anyway, I liked your ideas! We should go off a swap some notes on some d6-y D&D mechanics. Ideally, I'd love to work out a Warhammer-inspired d6D&D, or at least make all the Stats and Saves work on 6d lines. The other dice still have a place on the table, but I feel the players need to touch d6s more than anything else. It's just me as a DM looking for the easy life.

Speaking of which, the other simplification I want to work on is Hex Dungeons. I'm not sure why, when we enter the dungeon, we move from the wilderness hex (a lovely simplification of the minutiae of travel) to this linguistically complex describing of dungeon-space in real terms. I realise I waste more time at the table talking about the walls than anything else. So, why not a 60' hexmap? So an unencumbered character can move two hexes in 10 minutes. Suddenly Dungeon Space, Time and Movement are visualised and crystal clear. I'm not scared by D&D getting boardgamey (Talisman is an RPG, secretly), are you?

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\n I'd like to think of it less as Tactical Decisions Leading to Victory but instead Tactical Decisions Leading to Story Data to be Justified Later. If that makes sense? I'm happy to give up some agency and nitty-gritty combat choices for a more fluent system of negotiating hostile dungeons as a War Party. Maybe I should go hunt down Tourchbearer too?

I've seen friends playing Arabian Nights! Never got the chance but it looks so very complex.

\n For those who have a problem with the wonkiness of first level HP, is is solved if we say that all 0-level folks have 3HP and whatever the rules give a first (and further) level character is added on? Is it more plausible that the young mage has 4 HP and the young fighter has 12?